Work Text:
She's exhausted. She's hungry. She hasn't eaten in...how long now? Only little morsels, paint licked off her fingers- and she had even less sleep than that. Every time she slept, she would lose time drawing, the paint drying and maybe dripping and leaving streaks and making a mess... she liked to watch her paint dry, but not in a boring way, instead working on something else with her past works hung up to dry.
She needed to draw at least something. One decent thing. One thing that she was actually proud of. Sure, her last painting sold for money beyond imagination- but she didn't like it. To her, it was valuable in money but meant nothing to her otherwise.
She had a nice home. Nice bed. Nice halls, nice spots to hang art, a studio with a window often closed by curtains to limit sun damage on her work. One old lamp that she owned since the old days. One framed picture, used to be of her family, now covered in butter and various paints that splattered onto the glass. Sometimes Butter Pretzel looked at it, reminiscing about the old days, before claiming that some day she would clean that up.
She gazed towards the microwave, a bit of food ready for her. She took it out, stirring the instant noodles with a plastic fork, standing away from the art as she watched paint dry. The faster she ate something, the quicker she could go back to work. Sometimes it was tempting to not eat anything at all. If inspiration struck, or she was on the brink of a masterpiece she loved and so did the buyers, eating would only take time away from that.
She closed her eyes. Her hands were burning due to the cup, but the layers of paint on them kept it from searing a hole through her. Sometimes she couldn't really see the color of her hands.
One more bit of food, and she threw the whole thing away, half empty, before standing up and going to check the mail.
She did this all the time. This is where notifications of her work getting put into galleries went- or if it was declined, either of too little space or it "didn't fit" in some way. She had sent so, so many things out and got used to seeing the letters, scanning them all the way down until she read the words "accepted" or "declined". Then she would look up at the painting name, and it was always the same trend. Butter sold well, got into art galleries, sold at auctions, was revered along with her name. Anything else? Sent back to her with a sticker on it for her to toss into her cellar like everything else she ever cared about.
A few more letters. Five declines and one success. She didn't even bother checking the names. She would find out soon enough which ones would be sent back.
She laid down for a few hours, tired as all hell, no sleep and no sanity in her frail body. Yet another feeling of panic in the back of her mind, and no matter how hard the painter cried she could never quell the feelings that came with it. She knew what the galleries liked, then why didn't she do it, why did she waste all this time on useless passion projects instead of what they preferred of her? At least she had something, better than the old days on the streets when she had to ask family for handouts and hearing many, many comments about her choice of work and how useless it was and be like the rest of your family!! They're making money, doing things!
A knock at the door, distracting her from the breakdown she had almost every time she got out of the studio. Sighing, standing up best she could, trying to hide any signs of what she was doing but art, she checked the peephole.
Of course. Her cousin was here again.
Croissant was...an okay family member. One of the successful ones, as she had been told, but also the only one that seemed to have some actual concern for her. Croissant was...nice to her, to say the least, the only one who handed her coins when she was down on her luck before she created the technique that saved her whole career. And even now the engineer checked on them, wide smile always on their face, not a hint of underlying traumas or sadness. Maybe that was why Pretzel hated when she came over so much: she looked happy, okay with her life, some...fancy director or something stupid like that.
Another knock on the door. If she didn't open it, Croissant would...hack it or something. She seriously wasn't sure.
So she opened it.
"I brought you something." her jovial cousin said, holding up a box full of her chosen dinner: instant ramen noodles. "They were having a sale- and I love these too, and I thought hey, lets bring you some!"
"I don't need anything." Butter Pretzel said, clutching the side of the door. "I'm fine."
"You sure? I did come all this way..."
"Time doesn't matter to you anymore, does it?"
She took the box anyway, not caring about Croissant's saddened face or the sigh she let out, punctured by the raspy hissing of her ruined lungs. Butter Pretzel would never know about that, if Croissant had her way.
"Guess not as much. But hey, sales don't come too often!" And I know you would never get out of the house to do it yourself.
"I'm rich as hell."
"Sales are still nice."
They stared at each other for a while, the tension so thick you could cut it with scissors, both of them fidgeting a bit under the intense stare of the other Cookie.
"Well... you do you." Croissant eventually said. "Enjoy the stuff. You come to me if you need something, okay?"
"Fine." she said, closing the door with a huff- before leaning against it, holding the box with one hand.
Maybe she should be a bit nicer to her cousin. Maybe she should accept more stuff, or call sometime, or hang out like how they did when they were naught but kids. But something held her back- jealousy of how content everybody else was? Her own feelings of mediocrity? Croissant invented time travel or something, and she could draw nice.
She spent a few minutes standing there absentmindedly before her mind went back to the topic of art, and with a sigh she started to trek back to her studio, box in hand.