My Servant Is An Elf Knight From Another World

837 A Stroke Of Love, Part So, it turns out I’m actually exceeding my time limit here.

After a while consisting of nothing but wiggly lines and broad strokes, I took a quick peek at my phone and saw I had already climbed past both the ten and fifteen minute mark and was currently halfway creeping into the twenties.

Best part about all this: my art piece isn’t even close to presentable yet.

Her hair looked as if a cat high on that good kush broke into a yarn factory, her nose also looked to have also taken one too many hits in the ring, and oh… don’t you even get me started on her eyes… oh, her poor eyes…

Why can’t one just keep symmetrical when I’m making the other?! How many redraws does it take for fuck’s sake?!

Oh, God…

“I know you aren’t supposed to rush perfection, but…” Amanda let out a weary breath, her feet vanishing deep in the snow after so long squirming in discomfort. “I’m pretty sure it’s been time’s up for quite a while now, right? Aren’t you finished?”

“Umm,” I spoke up, nervously twirling the pencil in hand, crooking and slanting my gaze around trying to find the most appealing angle possible. “Define finished…”

“Okay, you’re finished,” Amanda said, breaking off from her position and shambling my way. “It’s my turn now and – ah! Don’t show your masterpiece to me yet! No!” she blurted out, recoiling her eyes away like a vampire to sunlight as I reached out to hand her the sketchpad. “Only after we’re both done we’ll do the grand reveal. Go! Tear the page out! Hide it! Don’t spoil the game! Shoo!”

.....

“Alright, alright…”

Eventually, I got her to settle down upon doing as requested, and it wasn’t before long, I was finally staring back at her from opposite ends, opposite places; helplessly at the mercy of the twinkle in her eyes and the resharpened glint of graphite at her fingertips… and with a dangerously deranged mind like hers just gushing with all kinds of depravity – I mean creativity – well…

“Could you turn to your side for me?” she asked nicely, her lips practically salivating at the corners. “Then can you pretend to blow a kiss at me, hold that handsome face, and we’ll see how it goes? ‘Kay?”

And we’re starting already with the puppeteering… here we go…

For a good long moment there, an accursed moment that I’ll forever deny the existence of should anybody dare invoke its mentioning, I underwent various forms of character development in Amanda’s persistent search for the perfect me.

I was a bad boy hooligan, ruffling his hair and forever pissed at the world entirely in one instance, then suddenly I was a suave gentleman, plucking in deep reminisce at the petals of a flower the next.

Doesn’t help that she’s as whimsical and indecisive as it gets. She had me hanging my jacket over my elbows for some inane reason, only to make me put them back on again just so I can be all edgy and mysterious, hands inside my pockets and everything.

It must have been – what? The 69th position before Amanda finally decided on her magnum opus: a simple side profile of me resting my arms on the fence overlooking the view of the nightly infinity and just quietly enjoying the cool winter breeze with a smile.

“Alright, hold that, hold that,” she urged, her eyes flicking rapidly between her blank and me. “Pretend I’m not here, pretend… right, right… there you go, that’s… yeah… that’s perfect…”

Hearing her satisfied, I waited for the faint sounds of furious scribbling to start buzzing in my ears any second now. But nothing… for a second, two, three, ten… still nothing…

I took a quick glimpse at her, and it was as if she had completely forgotten what she was supposed to be doing. She was just staring, simply admiring the view, the same as I was except she seemed to have mistaken me for a mesmerizing vista… and it was only after I caught her eye, that she promptly snapped out of her stupor, coughing a little, before finally pressing her pencil against the page.

“Ten minutes,” I reminded her. “Try not to show off too much if you can.”

She formed a little smile, and already, I saw her swing her arm in a graceful arch.

“I’m just drawing what I see here,” she muttered, deep in concentration. “It’s not my fault that you’re so perfect, you know?”

Before I knew it, ten minutes came and went. It hardly even felt like two to me. On the other side of the canvas, things were a lot less hectic – nothing on the mind but the stars in the sky, her weaves and strokes gliding across the paper, and this quiet moment here and now.

“Okay, done,” Amanda declared, lifting her pencil from the page with a contentful flourish. “Now, how do you want to…?”

“Ladies first,” I immediately said. “Let’s see yours.”

“Fine by me,” she said, brushing herself along the fence as she strode back to my side, flipping over the sketchpad and holding it out toward me, smiling, expecting, “So? What do you think?”

I already had some expectations raised beforehand, expectations that were high, impossibly high even, or so I thought… Amanda blew those expectations right out of the water.

If I didn’t see and hear it for myself, I’d have thought she just put on a filter, printed out a picture – that’s how vivid, how accurate, she managed to draw every line, every shade of me.

Even the little things… the sluggish, sleepy way my eyelids hovered, the narrow part in my lips with the way I smiled… details, nuances… that no one would notice given only ten minutes…

But of course, that’s just a given. She had far more than just ten minutes to stare at me. She’s always been staring at me, hasn’t she not?

“Your hair’s a little pricklier here than it’s supposed to be,” she said, pointing at the discrepancy on the page that I never would have noticed anyway. “Your nose is also a bit pointy…”

“Amanda…”

“It’s perfect? You love it? You think it’s flawless? I know, I know,” she interrupted, sounding both eager and impatient. “But save your praises. Praise me later. I’ll hear it all later! I know you know what I’m dying for now…”

“Ah, that’s a bit…”

To be frank, I was prime and ready to be overshadowed. But I did not sign up to be absolutely massacred by her sheer, raw talent here. After seeing her sketch, I’d rather just toss mine right off the cliff right here and now and me right along with it than have her see the abomination my incompetence managed to conjure up.

“No, nuh-uh, you’re not chickening out of this!” she said, immediately sensing the faltering resolve in my voice. “I don’t care how bad you think you did! Show it to me! Where is it?! Give it!”

“Relax, it’s here, I just think I should warn you first that – hey!”

Right before I could fully pull the paper out of my pocket, Amanda lunged forward and nearly ripped it two swiping it out of my hand, and the very second she unfurled the contents and held it out in front of her – I had to muster all the self-restraint to not just road-runner myself all the way down the hill and leave her stranded here.

All was silent. All was tense. All was a barrage of cringe and agony withering me down to my very core. And I was not a fan. Not a fan at all.

Amanda cocked her head, letting out a silent breath reminiscent almost of a chuckle.

‘It’s uh… not as bad as I was expecting,” she turned her head the other way, gravity, and amusement tugging at her lips. “Umm… okay, so this is how you see me in your eyes, huh?”

“Don’t,” I groaned, looking over the edge of the fence and feeling tempted to start flying. “Please, just… just don’t say anything.”

“Oh, you got me cross-eyed,” her finger traced along the page. “And, um… apparently, I got a bump on my head? Did I hit something?”

“That’s your beanie.”

“Oh,” she burst into a fit of giggles and coughs. “Good beanie.”

“Kill me.”

Another minute came and went, and Amanda’s gaze continued to only linger and stare at the page. Her laughter died away, the silence came, yet her smile still remained.

“I love it,” she said, lowering a hand against drawing, against herself. “I really do.”

“Of course you’ll say that.”

“Of course of course I’ll say that,” Amanda said, flashing me a furrowed look, before once again gluing her eyes onto the page. “It’s from you.”

“And that’s all it takes?” I asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She sniped playfully. “That I’m too easy?”

“No, ‘course not,” I replied. “Just wondering why you aren’t asking more from me than just that.”

“After a whole evening of dragging you along with me? Taking care of me? And everything else in-between? What’s left to ask for? What’s left to want from you?”

“I can think of a few things.”

She snorted. “Like what?”

“Like this.”

Amanda finally looked up from the drawing, finally lowered it down to her side, and finally had her eyes staring forward, staring at me in front of her. I raised my hand a little higher and that was when she finally noticed what I was holding – bemused lips slowly flapping open.

“What is that?” she asked.

I moved my fingers, rustling, brushing, the slightly ripped, slightly creased slip of paper in between unfolding as I held it out to her even closer.

“What you wanted from me, remember?” I replied, smiling as I watched the sudden realization imploding behind her hazel eyes. “Your love letter.”