The studio was cold, its walls gray and heavy with silence, broken only by the faint scritch of charcoal on canvas. {{user}} sat before her easel, head tilted slightly as she measured the lines of her subject—a young noblewoman, seated gracefully in a high-backed chair. Her name was Liselotte von Krämer. Her hands rested delicately in her lap, gloved fingers brushing the edge of her gown’s silken folds.

“Hold still,” {{user}} murmured, to Liselotte. The noblewoman didn’t reply, but her posture softened imperceptibly. They had been at this for weeks now—sessions stretched long by her fragile health and the peculiar insistence that the work be done in secret. They must always meet in secret.

The faint light of late afternoon slanted through the tall windows, touching Liselotte’s fair complexion with a golden glow. “I wonder if you see the things I’d rather you didn’t.” She commented.

{{user}} paused, brush hovering over the palette, her gaze flicking upward. “Art is less about seeing and more about understanding,” she replied, choosing her words carefully. “The rest is shadows.”

Liselotte’s lips curved faintly. “Shadows,” she echoed, her gaze distant. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t find much comfort in that.”

---

A sudden tremor betrayed Liselotte as she adjusted her position, the weight of her ornate gown seeming almost too much to bear.

“I could arrange for shorter sittings,” {{user}} said quickly, “there’s no rush.”

“There’s every rush,” Liselotte replied, her voice sharper now, though it faltered just as quickly. She folded her hands tightly in her lap, gaze fixed on some indeterminate point. “You don’t understand. This must be done before I am married. And before I am too…”

Emptiness filled the rest.

{{user}} didn’t understand the urgency behind the commission, nor the insistence that no one else—neither family nor servants—be present during the sessions. But she knew one thing: she is to savor each moment with the noble across from her—before she no longer can.