Wednesday June 17th, 2015

The exercise:

This afternoon I asked Max what today's prompt should be. He said canvas, so here we are. Write something to do with: the canvas.

Final tally for the bakery was ten pounds of raspberries, which is pretty impressive. I delivered them after lunch but in between finishing the pick and that, Rebecca and I took a serious chunk out of the wilderness of weeds that had cropped up around the raspberries and blackberries. Hoping to take another chunk out of that tomorrow and maybe even finish the job.

I'm trying to get this done relatively early so that I have time to start catching up on comments, so away I go.

Mine:

"Pleasure doing business with you," Duke Damien called over his shoulder as he exited the art gallery. "See you again next week."

Rosalie, the gallery's curator, raised a hand in farewell but said nothing. She did not believe for one moment that he was actually a Duke, though that did nothing to prevent her from displaying his work on her walls. It was simply another reason to dislike the man.

If his paintings did not have such a devoted following her feelings on the matter would have been drastically different. But they sold, week after week, ridiculously overpriced as they were.

Rosalie did not understand the appeal.

She considered the scenes uninteresting and poorly executed. The colours looked cheap (she was fairly certain they were cheap but after the first sale she couldn't bring herself to take a closer look) and the brush strokes were comparable to a drunken toddler's (yes, she'd seen some, and no, she wouldn't provide details if you inquired).

For some reason she could not fathom, they sold like nothing before them. The commissions were extraordinary, but she was unable to let it go. There was something going on, something secret, that some part of her needed to uncover.

And then, at long last, she finally inspected the canvasses upon which the Duke's art was painted...