THE ARTIST'S PALETTE

They sat in a purposely dim-lit room full of canvasses, with her calmly sitting by the large windowsill and illuminated by the bright moonlight as he sat on his stool a few meters from her posed body. She was dressed in a white, silky nightgown the barely covered her pale skin, her long pink hair covering the expanse of her mounds as if she were a mermaid with only her hair to cover her human body. Her body was leaning on the large window, her creamy, flawless legs lifted and supported by the curtain draped under her. One arm on the wood, another on her flat abdomen, her head tilted to him and her eyes closed, she looked like a dozing angel, with the moonlight making her glimmer with the stars.

The only lamp in the room was beside him, giving him the light to see his masterpiece of oil on the canvass. With a flick of the brush on his left hand and the dab of the paint, he accented her hair's luminescence under the moon. The light gray streak on where the light hit her face was exactly the same shade as the color on her body, and he added the shadows on the most accurate placements of her image. After adding the detailed touches, he pulled his hand away from the canvass and laid the paintbrush absently on his palette as he compared his painting to its model.

His magenta eyes sprinted to and fro, image to body, as he checked for the right hues and shadows, and his brows creased, a sign of his rare perplexity. He "hm"ed to himself, trying to find the missing piece of the puzzle. He noticed a lack of life, of vibrancy, in his obra maestra. In the middle of his unusual stupefaction, a weary sigh escapes her lips; a sleepy one, to boot. The grandfather clock struck eleven, and she let out a disgruntled yawn.

He took that action as a sign of her drowse, and he immediately closed in on her without a single word and took her in his arms. She opened an eye to peek at his weary face; he was really a frugal artist. He effortlessly lifted her body from the windowsill and pulled her closer to his body. He carried her out of the mahogany door, out to the long hallway lined with paintings of his ancestors and lit by the crackling fire from the torch holders.

As they passed by portrait to portrait,the eyes of his great grandfather, grandfather, uncle, and, finally, the father followed their slowly-moving bodies. Sakura felt their eyes on her and on the man carrying her, and in her mind, she knew he felt them too, but she continued leaning on his arms in silence anyway.

They entered his room and he lit th oil lamp, and the whole room shone under the small lamp's light. He waled to his massive bed, her on his arms, and laid her gently on its maroon covers. Her still body sank comfortably on the bed sheet and the soft comforter, and she kept motionless like a fragile china doll, only blinking her eyes less than often. He slowly paced to his thick, velvet curtains and pushed them to the curtain holders, letting the soft and cold moonlight enter the room and give life to its dull yellow light. He looked at her from the window, and under the gentle white emanating from the full Luna, she looked like a live Ophelia, a Venus on a sea of blood, and he couldn't help but admire her pale yet live beauty on his bed.

He returned to the bed, but not before burning the light out of the lamp. Now, with the absence of the bright orange shimmer, the room was only a mixture of whites and grays and blacks and a dark shade of colors, but she, in her youthful beauty, was still vibrating with colors. He need not identify all the colors she bore with her, for the combination of all the hues was her vibrancy and life; he knew that by heart as an artist ad saw her beauty strike throughout the whole room.

How lucky he had been to find her, and her to be found by him. She was just the seamstress's daughter and delivered dresses to his mother. She mastered the art of her mother as well, and when parents passed away and orphaned her, she had to seam and stitch the orders by her own.

One day his mother, the queen, planned a ball for all the fine women of the country and beyond to let him have a pick for a wife, and she ordered a beautiful, gold-lined dress from Sakura. The young girl worked on it the whole night, from twilight to the new moon, to an eclipse and until the breaking dawn. Indeed, with her skill and inborn talent, she had finished sewing the gown, and after a nap of three hours, she walked back to the palace with the elegant art in a simple box on her frail arms.

He had met her that day, and the line between royalty and peasantry ceased to exist. He gave her expensive cloth for her to sew a garment for herself to wear in the ball. And on that fateful day of the ball, he announced to the whole kingdom that he was choosing her to be his bride. As expected, nobody was pleased by his decision aside from both of them, and his father had threatened to deny Sasori of the king's crown lest he change his mind, but he did not want to give up Sakura for anything else in the world, so the old king gave up and accepted the seamstress's daughter as the prince's wife.

Though young she is and older he maybe, their lively youth still vibrated in their faces. With her, he mastered and professionalized his hobby, and for the first manifestation of his everlasting art, he decided to make a painting of his wife's ethereal beauty. She as his model, they sit in his painting room every night until they want, with him painting her posed body on the canvass.

He slowly walked to the bed and pulled off his cloak noiselessly. She looked at him and put in her mind the aristocratic build of her husband's body. He was not muscular and his body was just lean. The form-fitting shirt he wore was hugging his curves well, yet they made him look so masculine. She laid her palms on his chest and caressed him down to his abdomen, earning her an aroused groan from him.

Her hands swept down the hem of his top, and slowly, with her nimble, agile fingers, she peeled off the shirt from his upper body. He grunted as he raised his arms to help her discard the item and undress him, and when nothing was covering his perfectly chiseled chest, she ran her hands along its ridges, and he was not able to suppress the moan from escaping his mouth. All the while, her eyes were looking at his magenta orbs, the sultry look from her eyes fueling him with more desire.

He lowered himself unto her, and the hands that roamed on his chest and abdomen moved to his spine. She swept her fingers on his back hastily like a feather-touch, exciting him more. He pressed his lips unto hers, and as she opened her mouth to grant him entrance, he lashed his tongue in and explored her cavern. She responded to him, and as they nibbled on each other's lips, Sasori's hands pulled her white gown up. They paused their kiss to fully take the cloth off of her body, and he claimed her lips again when the dress slipped off her head.

He nibbled on her lower lip one more time, then he pulled away to look at her body, a body to die for. He closed his eyes, then opened them again to prove to himself that this was not a dream. Indeed, her luscious body was still there, ready to be taken by him.

She pushed his head to her mounds, and as he flicked the taut pink bud with his tongue, she greedily pushed him closer to her body with a moan. He engulfed the large expanse of flesh and his other hand squeezed on the one his mouth was not on. As he sucked hard like a baby feeding from his mother, Sakura let out a breathless groan, and her legs pulled his trousers off his lower body.

Things moved so fast, moans turned to erotic screams, and before she knew it, Sakura was already nearing the peak of her pleasure. Sasori rammed into her with so much vigor that she could see the stars rotating in her head. Finally, their sweaty bodies, molded into one, exploded in a majestic cloud of pleasure and bliss, and her delighted scream echoed through the whole castle.

Her clouded eyes blinked slowly to regain her clear vision, and she saw her lover's tired face descend to the crook between her neck and her shoulder. He laid his head there, his warm, shallow breathing fanning on her hot, scorching skin. He inhaled her body's sweet scent and moved closer to her ear. The hair on the base of her neck stood on their ends as he licked her outer earlobe. "Sah-soh-rhi..."

"Mmm," he growled and pulled himself up to look at her face to face. A smirk adorned his tired but satisfied face, and he ran a thumb lightly on her smooth cheek. Their eyes met, emerald clashed with garnet, and his eyes widened in a rare sense of surprise, rare because she had only seen such an emotion on his face once, which was during their honeymoon, after their first lovemaking.

She blinked, unsure of what she saw, but the rare expression on his face disappeared in less than a second. This time, it was replaced by a very sincere smile, a smile only seen among young and innocent children when they discover the answer to a challenging query. Here he was, in his royal glory, looking at her as if her realized for the first time that she was a wonderful woman. Before she had the chance to ask him to share what insight he found, he close his eyes, took a deep breath, and laid beside her, entwining her with his arms and legs around her lithe body. He fell asleep at once.

She tilted her head to see his peaceful face, and seeing him as calm and serene as a dozing child warmed her heart. This was the man she fell in love with and is going to spend her whole life with. Sasori loved her back, unlike her childhood crush, Sasuke, who just shattered her fragile glass of a heart into many shards and splinters. The prince was the one who molded her back, not to a glass figurine but that of a hard and sturdy topaz. He made her fell wanted and loved, and he was very willing to give up everything for her even if it was his own crown.

Her lips gave a quick peck on his, and she pulled out a blanket to drape around her naked body. She quietly crept out of their room, making sure that the door was closed. With only the cloth on her, she traced her path back to her lover's workroom. She flicked the lamp on, yet she never recalled Sasori turning it off before they left for their bedroom. As the orange light filtered all throughout the room, her husband's obra maestra caught her eyes. She slowly reached for the artwork and touched it gently, careful not to ruin it.

She softly ran a finger on the image's cheek as if it was real, and she could not help but admire her own beauty. Sasori painted what he saw, she knew that well, and he slowly turned her to a Narcissus, terribly admiring her own physique. However, she retained a humble part of her and tried her best to prevent vanity to overcome her.

She shifted her sight to the image's closed eyes, and she realized what Sasori was perplexed about. It is true; the painting was magnificent and it was even comparable to Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, but it lacked emotion and life. It just looked like a collection of colors and strokes on a plain canvass, and there was no meaning to it. Like Sasori, she was aware of the problem but did not know how to solve it.

Confusion loomed over her as she looked at the painting. She knew she was not supposed to see the painting, but, curious as she was, she decided to check it out. Now she took part in Sasori's problem, and she became too busy in observing the art to notice that somebody had opened the door. A few seconds later, lean arms wrapped around her, startling the life out of her as she squeaked, "Eek!"

"Mm...It's just me." His breath fanned on her ear, and she relaxed under his touch. The blanket fell from her body, and his hands freely roamed on her skin. A breathy moan escaped her lips as his palm fluttered over a sensitive spot and she tilted her head in reaction to let her mouth linger there. When his lips made contact with the skin between her neck and her shoulder, she shivered with desire and put a shaky hand on his head, fisting his maroon hair and urging him more. They had their second round that night, and they spent their sleep in his workroom.

The next morning, she woke up without him by her side. Instead, he was back on his stool, already on his final touches. She then noticed the life radiating from the canvass as she looked into the emerald eyes of the image. She smiled; he finally found the missing link, and it was just a matter of color from his palette.

OWARI WORD COUNT: 2280 words +- 10

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The Legendary Kanin