Written by Miriam Fernandez
Art by Anete Lusina
To be able to write and draw was all that mattered to her. She would spend hours sitting on the floor, sketching in her notebook, the sun coming in the window with a little wind. She had had that notebook for years now; her first drawing had been of a tree and a few flowers. Back then, she hadn’t realized how much it mattered to her, how happy it made her when the notebook was slowly filled with her drawings. They were all simple and she only drew how she knew, but it was her happiness. That notebook was the home of all the drawings she had ever made in her life.
And she carried it everywhere. Even when there was no school and she stayed in her room. Even when she traveled with her family, driving in the car. It was actually one of her favorite times to draw, as she would watch everything from the window. The cars that passed by her car, all the trees and bushes and roads. The clouds that drifted away, some staying and others moving with her car. Sometimes, she would try to close her eyes to remember everything she saw, imagining how she would later draw it in her notebook. When she would start drawing and sketching everything she thought about, she would write a little of everything on another page.
When she didn’t know what to draw, she would open her notebook and write about her day. She would even write about her dreams and think about the drawings she had drawn before. Stories and characters and places from the drawings. And when she looked back at her drawings, it seemed to her that the places and people and everything she drew became real in her room. It was like she could see everything and everyone again. She would keep writing until the evening came and the light from the sun disappeared.
Her drawings were pictures. They were stories that she was able to capture before they were gone; people that she knew and her favorite places all in one small notebook. The same notebook that held the tree and the few flowers she drew kept her memories too. And she knew that one day, there would be a last page. One last time to keep a memory, to save a story that someone could see and read. It was another reason why she loved that notebook. She could always look back to the time she was learning how to draw or the year she met her closest friends. She could see again the dreams that she might have not remembered if she had not drawn them. If she had not written them in her notebook.
She knew that she would grow up and stop drawing as much as she did when she was young. There would be a day when her hands would no longer be able to draw the same picture, when the notebook would no longer have another page for another drawing. But her notebook would never be finished. Just like her drawings. There was always something more to draw.
outlander zine 