Awakened

She sculpted him during an autumn that refused to end.

By day, her studio was the sound of chisel against stone, commissions piling upon commissions, sometimes laughter woven through preparation and routine. By night, the space became a silence that settled like fresh snow, where the statues waited beneath the tall windows, each in its own stage of becoming. Yet one of them stood apart through its sheer presence.

She had not intended to give him horns. Those came later, when her hands no longer obeyed her thoughts. But once they were there, she could not bring herself to remove them. There was something strange in the way her hands would not stop, as if they had always known what they were meant to do. And, oddly enough, adding something imperfect to the statue comforted her. One of the four horns remained raw stone, unpolished, as if broken. And so it would stay.

Clara worked until her palms nearly bled. Not out of ambition, but out of a need so deep it almost frightened her: the need to be seen by something that would not look past her.

Life had not been kind to her. But neither had it been cruel. Her existence lingered on a threshold difficult to define, like an acceptable mediocrity, tolerable yet exhausting. She had never known her father. Her mother had been a quiet presence, loved but always absent, working tirelessly to support their small family. After her mother's sudden passing ten years ago, Clara began to think they took pieces of her she could not bring back again.

Withdrawal brought with it a deep calm, like balm on a soul scratched raw by pain. But in time, calm became numbness. She felt almost like a human-shaped shell, imitating emotions, gestures, words, without truly feeling them.

Now a sculptor by trade, Clara cherished the craft she had learned from her uncle. As a child she had spent countless hours in his workshop, playing with tools, chipping stone, or building imaginary friends from leftover fragments. Though she was often scolded, Uncle Matias’s mustache would invariably lift into a mischievous smile.

“You’ll end up with Viking hands if you keep carving like that! Like sandpaper, not skin! No boy will ever want to hold your hand!” he would laugh heartily. “Shoo, you little devil, you’ll ruin my commission!”

Uncle Matias was one of the few people in Clara’s life who could still bring her smiles back.

The statue she was now contemplating had become a familiar, comforting presence. Not because she had worked on it for so many hours, but because on nights when loneliness pressed hardest, Clara would rest her head against its arm. The cold stone cooled her damp cheeks and asked nothing of her.

She did not cry often. In fact, she joked about her troubles, and if she was honest with herself, she liked her solitude. It allowed her to be exactly as she was, flaws and all. The few relationships she had had - romantic or otherwise - had taught her that everyone expected something from her: a version of what she ought to be, not what she truly was.

So the studio, her commissions, and Brutus the tomcat made up her small world.

“Come on, Brutus. Dinner.”

The cat brushed past her legs, stopping only to wind himself around her ankles and purr suggestively, as if he had been waiting for those words all evening.

Clara took the few ingredients from the small refrigerator, making a mental note to shop more often.

“Otherwise, we’re moving straight into the ‘paper thin’ category. I wouldn't worry about you though, you little glutton,” she whispered to him.

As she set the pasta to boil, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck suddenly stood on end.

She turned sharply.

Everything was exactly as she knew it. The statues’ eyes were fixed, as always, on distant points, contemplative or closed. Everything seemed unchanged. Nothing strange.

Except for the shiver that ran through her.

“Maybe it’s time to turn the heat up a bit,” she said, scanning the studio. She counted to ten in her head. Ten seconds of complete silence, and life resumed its course.

“Dinner for two sounds good, doesn’t it, you chubby aristocrat?” she said, ruffling the short orange fur of the most spoiled creature with pretensions of nobility.

The pasta was well received. Seconds were demanded.

“I’ll work a bit more and then come to bed,” she said to Brutus who looked at her with pleading eyes.

The cat walked calmly, but when he reached the statue of the Guardian, he stopped. He stared at it for a long moment, then bristled and bolted suddenly toward the spare bedroom in the studio.

Clara shaked her head, laughing at the cat's antics, thinking he must be getting the zooming, as we would often do. After all, the studio was all his and he never missed an opportunity to show as much.

For the longest time she wished the place was more modern in its appearance, thinking it would bring in possibly more clients. Now, however, she couldn’t picture anything else other than the old house, with it's big windows, beautiful archways and tall rooms.

She often also slept there, so her apartment had become more of a vacation spot than a permanent home.

Finally finishing up for the day, she turned off the lights and headed towards the inviting bed. But not before turning, looking around the familiar sight of her studio and whispering into the nothingness:

“Good night.”