It started with a smell — something faint from the hallway. Turpentine, maybe. Or linseed oil. It drifted past him as he crossed the living room, and just like that, his mind cracked open.
He used to live in color.
Woke before the sun. Coffee in one hand, paintbrush in the other. Music playing too loud. Canvas after canvas stacked in corners, hallway, even the kitchen.
He was obsessed. Joyfully. Restlessly. The world had no edge then — only brushstrokes and hunger and the kind of stillness that only came from creation.
People knew his name. Galleries hung his work. Interviews. Talks. Buyers. Flashbulbs.
But that wasn't the part he missed.
It was the heat in his chest when a painting finally clicked. That fire. That certainty.
He remembered standing in front of a massive canvas, palms stained blue, laughing. Someone — an old friend, a rival maybe — had shouted something about his work being "too loud."
Rey had shrugged and said, "So is living."
Now, his days were soft. Controlled. Measured in mugs of tea, in walks with Beans, in quiet rain.
And yet, tonight, after dinner, he found himself standing near the old covered canvases again. His fingers grazed the dusty sheet. No real thought. Just instinct.
He didn't uncover them.
Not yet.
But something in him thudded — low, warm, insistent.
Like memory turning over in its sleep.
Like it was about to wake.