09-09-2017, 05:37 PM
Eyes snapped open in the darkness.
Preston was wide awake. No grogginess at all. Adrenaline in spades though. Plenty of that.
He'd kept a dream journal for years. Sometimes it helped with his paintings. He switched on the light, sitting up. The covers fell away from his shirtless form as he wrote it all down. He underlined some things. He circled others. He put big huge question marks next to other things.
He tossed it aside when he was done. In the normal course of things, the artist would have just...gone back to sleep.
Thirty minutes of aimless staring at his ceiling, though, in which he couldn't bring himself to turn off the light, prompted him up and out of bed. He'd heard the damned panther legend all his life. He knew where to go.
He rummaged in his closet, pulled on jeans instead of slacks, pulled on a collared shirt over that. Sneakers. Then he grabbed a few other supplies. Paper. Charcoal.
This is barking insane. It's 4 in the morning.
He threw it all into a messenger bag, then got into his little Mazda. He drove to the bridge. He pulled his Coleman flashlight out of the back; a camping light that he used when he needed one because it stood upright.
And then he knelt in the morning dew and pressed that paper to the stone remnant of the bridge, furiously taking a rubbing of the carvings.
Preston was wide awake. No grogginess at all. Adrenaline in spades though. Plenty of that.
He'd kept a dream journal for years. Sometimes it helped with his paintings. He switched on the light, sitting up. The covers fell away from his shirtless form as he wrote it all down. He underlined some things. He circled others. He put big huge question marks next to other things.
He tossed it aside when he was done. In the normal course of things, the artist would have just...gone back to sleep.
Thirty minutes of aimless staring at his ceiling, though, in which he couldn't bring himself to turn off the light, prompted him up and out of bed. He'd heard the damned panther legend all his life. He knew where to go.
He rummaged in his closet, pulled on jeans instead of slacks, pulled on a collared shirt over that. Sneakers. Then he grabbed a few other supplies. Paper. Charcoal.
This is barking insane. It's 4 in the morning.
He threw it all into a messenger bag, then got into his little Mazda. He drove to the bridge. He pulled his Coleman flashlight out of the back; a camping light that he used when he needed one because it stood upright.
And then he knelt in the morning dew and pressed that paper to the stone remnant of the bridge, furiously taking a rubbing of the carvings.