Bianca frowned at the woman in front of her. She held her pencil up, as if to measure the ratios of the woman's body, but it was of no use. Bianca had long memorized the length of her thighs, where her elbows landed on them while she hunched forward, the way her ankles elongated and her toes bent while braced against the bar of her stool, and the slope of her shoulders as she gazed backwards over them.

"Do you think you could dye your hair?" Bianca's tone was short. Not cruel, but casual. Conceded.

The woman pursed her lips and stretched, slowly elongating her back and limbs before sliding off the stool altogether

"I already cut it." She glanced at the wall of red-pencil sketches behind Bianca, ran her fingers through a newly blunt-cut bob with a sigh.

"But the red... It's become tiresome." Bianca's voice lacked the color it once bled with.

"Tiresome."

"Yes, tiresome. Dull. uninspiring."

"Uninspiring."

"Do you need me to repeat myself?"

The woman was silent as she stepped towards one of the many mirrors in Bianca's studio. Her hair was red- not ginger. It was layered with hues of scarlet and vermillion and crimson. She wouldn't call it tiresome or dull. if anything, it was too much.

"No."

"No you don't need me to repeat myself or-"

"-No, just no, I don't know-"

"No I don't know, how eloquent of you-"

"What is wrong with you?" She screamed. Bianca was silent, she almost looked taken aback.

The woman shook her head, tousled her hair. "My hair is fine Bianca. I cut it for you a week ago. And dyed it for you a week before that!"

Bianca sets her pencil on the edge of her easel. "The red is wrong."

The woman is incredulous. "You don't even draw my hair! You just use it to pick the color pencil you draw with. You draw my neck and stomach and arms and thighs," She scans the drawings behind Bianca again. bold and expressive images of her body in deft red graphite.

"The hair is an afterthought. A scribble at the end."

Bianca follows the woman's gaze, flicks her own eyes between the pieces behind her. She was right, of course she was.  

Bianca looked back body she'd mapped a million times over. And at the splotch of red at its top that didn't fit.

The woman knew that gaze. Empty.

"Your eyes have changed." She said quietly.

"How so?"

"When's the last time you looked at me and saw a person?"

Bianca's eyes stopped, landing in the space between hips and waistline. She didn't answer.

"I'm not art Bianca. I'm not yours."

The woman leaves. Bianca didn't need to watch the way her hips shifted as she leaves, she memorized the movement long before.

Bianca sat back and sighed, gazed in the direction of the empty stool.

"What do when is one to do when they've learned all there is to learn about their muse?"