Throughout the slow burning of the day, the silver-skinned boy kissed the air with the ghost of moon-soaked lips, images circlinghis head and under his jaw, and paint spilled onto paper. He said he was not an artist, but the boy he remembered told him oncethat the language of art is such a sacred dream. And he believed him.

Art is created by artists. If ever he’d try to take lessons, it would be too many rules, too many steps. It would make his head hurt, not being able to splatter his emotions onto paper in his own way.

Art is contemplation’,” a voice said out of nowhere. “‘It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which theredivines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

He painted until his cursive brushes were only whispers of rawness on the thin ivory. Only the walls and the ravens that watchedknew the boy with the paint-stained palms weaved his art onto his sketchpad on the park bench at lunchtimes, and only the treeswhispered it like a prayer.