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He doesn’t quite realize it’s gone until he looks over at the wall, expecting something to be there, only to be met with robin blue paint. It’s every now and then that Ink repaints his house (or it repaints itself, really, the walls just changed color whenever they liked whether or not he did it himself,) and of course- Ink thinks that he just painted the walls a different color and forgot he did.
But there is a nagging feeling that he gets when he forgets something. The very distant, quiet hum, like a low, low melody playing through thick walls of plain canvas paper: Do you remember? Hey, look a little harder, there’s something missing here, right? Think about it a little harder.
So he does, and his feet brush over some abandoned sheets of paper on the ground as he meanders closer. There is a strange feeling in his chest, that missing tightness that locks around one’s throat. Suddenly his shirt is too constrictive about his throat, the stains are annoying and grimy on his bones, and every name and mark on his bones aches like a canyon dug into the planes of his body. He feels it all, every alien and familiar sensation of his bones and his body, as he stares at the empty blue wall, and wonders what was supposed to be there.
Ink has forgotten many things throughout his life. It’s not severe, not like how his friends joke about it. He gets distracted or lost mid-sentence, he wanders off sometimes, but it’s truly not that bad. Not really, except for when it comes to things like this.
He wishes he knew exactly what it was that always caused his lapses in memory. The thing was, he didn’t know what the common thread was between all his forgetfulness. Just that there was sometimes a thing there that was supposed to be there, and suddenly it was gone, and he just knew it was gone- not what it was. The evidence was always in the way things just went missing in his house. It was scary at first, but it had been happening for a long time before he met Dream or Blue or Error, or anyone, really. Ink thought it was just his house eating his stuff before later learning that the Doodlesphere didn’t do that. He measured the weight of what he was missing by the absence of it, and that often showed in his art, how he liked to play with negative space.
He places his hand on the wall gingerly, splaying his fingers wide.
Judging by the darkness around the walls where the thing was, it must have been a painting. But why was it gone? It clearly sat on the wall for a while before it was removed, because dust and sun and other stuff had dulled the colors of the paint. And he must have put it back up after painting, because the underside, rectangular and pristine, wasn’t a different color from the rest of the wall. The house couldn’t have gotten rid of it either, because it usually didn’t bother with decorations as large as this.
And why would it bother him so much?
Ink quirks his mouth to the side, tilting his head. Yeah, why would he feel upset about this? It was silly, he forgets things all the time and loses things. It was probably just a painting, and if he can’t recall the look of it… well, he’ll stumble over it some time. He brushed his fingers over his throat, which still felt tight, for some reason. And he pulled his hand away from the wall, chuckling quietly to himself.
Whatever it was that he forgot, he’ll remember it sometime, right? No need to make such a fuss. Everything was fine, he’ll just go on business as usual.
He almost forgot about the papers on the floor. “Ahh, I’m so messy!” Ink stuck his tongue out as he dipped down to swipe the sheafs off the ground, collecting them into a tidy bundle. His scarf draped along beside him, drooping from his neck and shoulders. “I could’ve slipped and hit my head pretty badly-”
What was that?
Ink squints his eyes at the pages. He turns it sideways, a strange and familiar clenching feeling in his chest. Again, again, that absence, what was missing?
What was he looking at? It seemed like only part of something. The lines went off the borders of the page. He flipped through the other pages, putting them back down on the ground carefully to rearrange them. But no matter how he arranged the lines, they wouldn’t connect all the way. A small bundle of frustration built in him, and he wasn’t sure why it made him so upset either, because normally a puzzle like this would be entertaining.
Absence.
What was he missing from the full image?
Ink kneels before the blank wall and the papers on the ground, bringing his pencil from his sash and a fresh sheet of paper. He holds it up to the empty rectangle where that frame used to be, and tries to imagine what’d be there. Maybe his past self was trying to remember what it was too, and tried to draw something new to go there. Maybe he’ll make it himself if he just tries hard enough.
“Maybe that’s it?” He ponders to himself.
Perhaps that’s the art, the point of it all. That something was there, something is gone. It’s to make him remember, to think more, to linger on what’s missing. Ink stares down at the arranged pages, all of them lines dancing over every dry well between white canvas, standing in the center of all their black lines and folding his arms over his chest. They trail mindlessly, ambling forward without a certain direction into a circle or nest of blank scribbling. The only pattern, the thread of continuity between them all is the nothing they mean and the nothing they contain, shaped in a messy black ‘O’ with him enclosed inside.
Ink frowns slightly as he looks up at the absent frame. Then, he sighs, patting his thighs twice in resignation. He flows back to his feet from where he once kneeled before the empty wall, trapped in the black circle of lines and papers, and declares to no one: “Oh well. I’ll remember eventually.”