Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

-- The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry (1917)

Lyric was reconsidering her sanity.

She’d wanted this man in her bed and in her life for so long, and now she’d stepped away from him to paint?

“You’re definitely losing it, Fielding,” she muttered to herself.

But it was as if madness had caught her, captured her, carried her away on a tide of exploding creativity. The colors.

Oh my God, the colors. The garden. Dare himself. She needed to paint all of it.

She needed to paint, more than she needed her next breath. She didn't know how to explain that to him – she needed him, too. More than she'd ever needed anyone in her life. But the fever had her, more powerfully than it ever had before, and she had to answer the Muse.

"Dare, you understand, don't you? Please, please tell me you understand," she pleaded. She was already out of bed and pacing the room to find her paints and easel. She needed her canvas like a junkie needed a fix, right now right now right now. She hoped he understood.

He had to understand.

Decidedly grumpy noises were coming from the direction of the bed but she heard his feet hit the floor, and he walked over to her. "Let me help."

"I don't need –"

He touched her arm. "I know you don't need my help. But I need to give it. Can you allow me that at least?"

She breathed him in, inhaling the scent that was uniquely him. She wanted to paint him. A portrait. A nude. Once – if – she had the chance to learn every inch of his body, she would take that knowledge gained through sensory input, through the touch of her fingertips and lips and skin, and use it to paint him.

The irony, of course, was that she'd never be able to see the portrait. Adding irony to irony, there was even had a name for what she did: blind contour drawing. It didn't refer to blindness, of course. If referred to the artist technique in which the artist concentrated solely on the subject of the drawing or painting, and never looked at her canvas while she worked.

She’d joked to Meredith once that all of her work was blind contour, but Meredith hadn't found it very funny. Her friend hadn’t much of a sense of humor when it came to Lyric's blindness.

Dare. He’d asked her something…Oh.

"Of course I'll allow it. I would love to have your help, because you're offering it to me as a gift and not as an obligation."

He stopped moving, and she felt his the muscles of his arm tighten beneath her hand just before he caught her mouth in a deep, claiming kiss.

When he finally released her, he lifted her chin with a finger. "Lyric, I'm a pirate. I don't do anything out of a sense of obligation. You should at least know that about me by now. Every single moment I've spent with you has been entirely and completely because I wanted to be here."

"I – oh." She didn't know what to say to that. It was a gift too large and too important for her to unwrap right now, caught in the throes of the Muse's demands. Instead, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him again. She tried to put everything she felt – everything he meant to her – in the kiss, but how could that even be possible? A kiss was a single note, and her feelings for him were an entire symphony. She wanted so much for him to understand, to believe in her.

She wanted him to believe in himself.

"Although," she said, grinning mischievously. "I still think The Painter and the Wicked Pirate has a lovely ring to it."

He laughed, that low, husky chuckle that was so delicious, and then he surprised her by smacking her on the butt.

"Enough of this screwing around. We need to make some art happen. And when I say we, I mean you, because I can't draw –"

"– a straight line," she finished for him. "Yeah, I get that a lot."

So many of the non-artistic people in her friend group and the tourists who came into her studio had said some variation of that phrase to her over the years. Sometimes it was funny, and sometimes it was annoying, how they seemed to look at her as if she were a trained monkey in a zoo doing a particularly interesting trick. They'd hasten to tell her all about how they couldn't draw straight lines, or couldn't draw stick figures. And sometimes she had to clamp her jaw tight to avoid saying anything like:

Well, rulers are a thing.

Or

Who would want to draw a stick figure anyway?

Tourist dollars didn't flow into her studio because she was rude to the paying customers, though. She had to create; it was as important to her as breathing – but she also had to eat. And as long as people wanted to buy her paintings, she felt it was a wonderful bargain.

A little prep, and she was ready to channel whatever the Muse was sending. The gardens. It had to be the gardens. Not the gardens as she'd imagined them when they’d first walked through, but the vivid, impressionistic shapes and colors and light that she'd seen while holding the amethyst.

"Eat your heart out, Renoir," she muttered, clenching one tooth paintbrush between her teeth while she selected another.

"Do you like his work?”

“Do I like his work? He’s only one of the greatest painters of all time,” she told him. “I could stand in front of Bal du Moulin de la galette for days. I was fascinated with it when my parents took me to Paris. Now I can only see it in my memory, but it will never fade.”

“His great, great, I don't know, maybe 100 times great-grandfather was Atlantean."

She dropped her paintbrush. "What? Are you telling me – no. Argh. It has to wait. I want to hear that story; I want to hear a thousand of your stories, but right now I have to paint. I need to paint."

"You need to paint, I get it. So I'll just sit here and watch."

Oh, that was so not happening. She turned his her entire body in his direction and put on a stern face. Or least as stern of a face as she could manage just after she’d been licking the man's ear a few minutes before.

"No. I'm sorry, but I can't work with someone watching me. Not in the initial phase. Can you, I don't know, go do some Atlantean thing for a while?" She made little shooing motions with her hands, and he started laughing.

"Fine. I'll go do Atlantean things. But I'll be back, and I expect payment on what we started here tonight," he said, sounding only a little disgruntled.

She smiled, but she could feel the heat of a fiery blush working its way up from her chest to her cheeks.

"Oh, I can promise you that, Captain."

She heard his footsteps again and then a thud next to her.

"I put a small side table here," he said, taking her hand and moving it to the table's surface. "I'm going to get you a glass of water, and then I'm going to leave and go do my Atlantean things. I’ll also have some food sent up, since you missed dinner."

"Sure. Right. Later," she said, already too distracted by the insistent pulse in her head of the painting that she needed to create.

Blues. Blues and greens and whites. The marble of the palace; that would be tricky. But as a backdrop for the flowers – oh, if only she could capture the extraordinary bouquet of scents in those flowers. Nothing she'd ever smelled before, which made sense. After all, they were probably species of plants that hadn’t been seen on Earth in millennia.

Greens. Reds – oh the pinks and purples, they’d shone so vividly in the vision she'd had while holding the jewel. Maybe she should begin with the fountain and center it on the page and focus the eye on the water. Flowing, dancing, sparkling: water like she'd never seen since before the accident. If she could capture the water…

If she could capture the water, she could capture the feeling.

She picked up a brush and began.

* * *

Lyric woke up feeling drained. But in a good way. When she tried to sit up, however, she rolled right off the bed. When she hit the floor, she realized she'd been sleeping upside down with her feet on the pillows,

Well, it wasn't like that hadn't happened before. When she was in the middle of a creative burst, sleep, food, and sometimes even oxygen seemed unnecessary.

She made her way carefully to the bathroom, but it wasn't a problem because she’d fixed the dimensions of the room and placement of the furniture and doors in her mind when she’d taken a brief break to use the restroom, splash water on her face, and try to shake out her cramped hand.

By the time she showered and was ready to face the day, she came out of the bathroom to a delicious scent of breakfast and coffee. Someone had brought a cart and left it just inside the studio door. She appreciated the thought, and she especially appreciated that they hadn't put it inside the bedroom door. She wasn't entirely sure how real palace servants acted, but the ones on TV and in books were always scurrying around going in places where nobody wanted them to go.

"This is Atlantis, my friend. We do things differently here," she mumbled, carefully pouring herself a cup of what smelled like really excellent coffee.

She’d just taken her first delicious sip of heavenly goodness, otherwise known as caffeine, when she heard someone walk into the room.

"Are you going to keep talking to yourself, or can anyone join in the conversation?" The voice was female, she hadn't heard it before, and it was sarcastic as hell. Lyric was so not in the mood for snark before breakfast.

"I don't know," she said mildly. "I usually find that at least if I'm talking to myself, someone intelligent is listening."

There was a silence, and then the woman started laughing. "Well, you’re not at all a meek little land mouse that Dare brought home to play with, are you?"

"I'm not a meek anything. Coffee?"

"I'd love some. Lots of sugar."

Lyric poured the coffee and held up the cup. "If you need so much sweetening up, I'm sure you can do it yourself."

She heard the metallic sound of the spoon in the sugar bowl and then the sound of stirring. The woman dropped the spoon carelessly on the tray, and then took some time to drink her coffee, giving Lyric time to form an impression.

She smelled like leather, oddly enough. Then the woman moved, and Lyric heard the slight whoosh—the rubbing noise of leather pants. Yikes. A badass, or so the woman wanted everyone to think.

Lyric rolled her eyes.

"I'm April. And you’re Lyric Fielding. I didn't realize blind people rolled their eyes. It seems sort of ridiculous."

Wow. This woman was going for the jugular. And Lyric had no idea why, but in spite of not having had her first cup of coffee yet, the one thing she did know was that she wasn't going to let April no-last-name get to her.

"As delightful as it is to hear your observations on what blind people should and should not do, perhaps you’d like to get to the reason for this visit?"

April walked a few steps in a direction that Lyric definitely did not want her to walk.

"Stop," she said sharply. “I don't share my work when it’s in progress, and I expect you to have the courtesy to respect my wishes."

There was another small silence, but then the woman walked back toward Lyric.

"Fair enough, mouse," April said. "So why are you here?"

Lyric was taken aback at the woman's bluntness and more than a little ticked off at her clumsy attempt at interrogation. "Well, I'd be happy to explain that to you, right after it's none of your damn business o'clock."

"Ouch. Well I was headed to breakfast, and I happened to walk by the room you're using as a studio," April said blandly, lying through her teeth.

"Well that's interesting, because to my knowledge this room is on the corner of the east wing, so there's no reason why you would just happen to be walking by it unless you were headed here on purpose."

"Touché. Is that bacon?"

"It smells like bacon, but how would I know? Maybe it's whatever passes for bacon from some weird Atlantean pig."

April laughed, and Lyric had the feeling she'd surprised it out of the woman. The manners that aunt Jean had pounded into her over the years raised their ugly head, though, and Lyric sighed.

"Would you like some of my breakfast?"

"I know you just said that so I'd say no, but I’m going to say yes. We should have a little chat," April said. "I'll pull up some chairs."

By the time they finished eating a truly magnificent breakfast, Lyric was no closer to understanding why April had come to visit her. Finally, she put her fork down and decided just to get to the point.

"So why are you here? It's not just to share a random breakfast with a random visitor. So what is it?"

April made a little snorting noise. "I just wanted to get a look at you, all right? I wanted to see what Dare was bringing home these days. When he was with me, I thought he had a type. We sailed together, we smuggled together, we slept together. Life was an adventure every day of the week. But you. You I don't get."

Lyric could feel the steam building up in her head, ready to pour out her ears, but she stayed outwardly nonchalant. "If it was all that wonderful, why aren't you sailing with him now?"

"Oh we ran our course a few years back. Gods, I guess five years back now. But I'm in the mood for a little action. I thought I'd look him up."

Lyric poured herself another cup of coffee in silence, and then she smiled what Meredith called her sharkiest smile. "You can try."

It was a challenge, and they both knew it. She might not be a pirate, but she was sure as hell able to cross swords with this woman.

April laughed. "Unfortunately, I think I'm going to like you in spite of myself. Maybe I do see what Dare sees in you."

"I'm so relieved," Lyric drawled.

April shoved back her chair, probably standing up.

"Well, when is he getting back? What did Poseidon say?"

The way April asked the question, Lyric knew that she expected her to have the answer. She realized, with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, that if she’d really meant anything to Dare, he would've told her about something so important is going in front of the – and she couldn't even believe she was going to think this – sea god.

Boy, times had changed.

She put her cup down and stood up, too. "I'm sure he'll be back when he's done. Shall I tell him you stopped by?"

"No need. I don't have time to wait around until he gets finished with whatever he's doing with you, no offense."

Lyric narrowed her eyes. "I’ve found that usually when people say 'no offense' they are saying something that is in fact designed to cause offense."

There was a silence, and then April made that small snorting noise again. "That was me shrugging. I just realized you couldn't see it, so I'm narrating. Sure, tell Dare I stopped by. Tell him it's his loss, and I'm going to join Denal in this new elite fighting team he’s starting. So maybe I'll see him around, and maybe I won't."

"Elite fighting team?"

She could hear April heading for the door but the footsteps stopped at her question. "Yeah. I'm going to be the first-ever of Poseidon's warriors to be female in the more than 11,000 years since Poseidon first swore them into service."

Pride and something else – trepidation, perhaps? -- rang in April's voice. In spite of herself, Lyric kind of wanted to wish her well. After all, that was one hell of a glass ceiling. 11,000 freaking years.

"Good luck," she said impulsively.

"You really mean that don't you?"

"Life is too short to say things you don't mean, don't you agree"

"Thanks. I hope I'm not going to need luck, but thank you anyway. You’re more than I expected. I’d wish you luck, too, with Dare, but I'm not sure I’d really mean it. So instead, I'll just say see you around. And, hey. Tell Dare that I'm rooting for him. I know he feels like he's not whole on his ship without Seranth, because she's part of him, the ship, and even part of the sea itself. But he’d be bored to death on land. He can't give up the sea – he wouldn't. Not for anything--or anyone."

Lyric stood there, clenching her shaking hands into fists, for a long time after the sound of April’s footsteps had faded.

Well. There was her answer. Even if Dare could love her, she’d bore him to death. So this little interlude in Atlantis meant nothing. Nothing would change between them. She’d continue to only see him a few times a year, until he ended up with someone like April.

What else was there for them? It's not like Lyric could become a pirate, even if she wanted to. Enough, already. She had work to do.

She walked over to her canvas and reached for the black paint.