Holli Would: A Kiss Made of Color by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Holli-Would-A-Kiss-Made-of-Color-1258993002

Holli Would: A Kiss Made of Color ANIMATION

The Canvas That Remembered Her Face

The night came in on stiletto heels.
In Cool World, that meant the neon bled slower, like color drained from a dream that refused to end. The skyline looked like a fever had painted it — half animation, half the trembling reality that artists never quite finished. It was in that melting border between brushstroke and breath that Holli Would walked, hips swaying with the rhythm of a lullaby for lunatics.

Her heels clacked across the cracked linoleum of the abandoned Ink Works Studio. Every step echoed like the click of a lock turning in reverse. The smell of turpentine and old cigarettes clung to the air. Ghosts of drawings long erased whispered from the walls — their lines faded, their eyes hollow.

“Oh sugar,” Holli cooed, her voice the purr of a saxophone at midnight, “they really let you go to ruin, didn’t they?”

Something moved in the dark. Not the shuffle of a man. More like a stroke of color sliding through shadow.

A brush.

It wasn’t big, at least not at first — maybe the length of her forearm, silver ferrule gleaming faintly, its bristles tipped with something that looked wet and alive. It dragged itself along the floor, leaving behind a faint shimmer — not paint exactly, more like liquid thought.

Holli crouched low, her golden curls cascading like candlelight. “Now what are you?”

The brush trembled. Its voice was a whisper of a whisper, coming from no mouth at all.
I am what remains when creation forgets its creator.

“Well, that’s dramatic,” she said with a smirk. “You and I will get along just fine.”

The brush moved closer, leaving trails of color that pulsed faintly — reds that sighed, blues that breathed. It stopped inches from her hand.
You’re beautiful, it said. You could be rewritten. Perfected.

She let out a small laugh that dripped sugar and smoke. “Baby, I already am.”

The brush twitched, a ripple of hunger coursing through it. Not yet. But you could be eternal.

That word — eternal — struck something in her. Cool World wasn’t kind to dreams. Beauty faded here faster than in reality; ink peeled, pigments cracked. The lines that shaped you eventually betrayed you. Holli Would had fought that erosion with every wink, every pose, every shimmer of her cartoon skin. But time still nibbled at the corners.

She tilted her head. “And what’s the catch, sugar? There’s always a catch.”

The brush’s bristles fanned out, gleaming like the fins of a predatory fish. You give me something to paint with. Something beautiful. I hunger for beauty. I feed on it. Then I can paint the world new.

Her eyes glittered. “Ain’t that poetic.”

Behind her, a framed painting cracked — just a hairline fracture, but it sounded loud in the silence. Holli didn’t flinch. She’d dealt with hungers before — men, monsters, and everything in between. But this one was different.

“Show me what you can do,” she said.

The brush lifted itself, bristles trembling. A stroke in the air, and suddenly the wall bloomed open like a wound — inside was a field of living gold, every blade of painted grass whispering. It wasn’t illusion. It wasn’t trick. It was.

“Oh honey,” Holli breathed. “You’re good.”

You could live there, the brush murmured. I could paint you forever.

She smiled, lips the color of ripe temptation. “Or maybe I paint you, sweetheart.”

The brush recoiled. No one paints me.

“Not yet they don’t.” Holli rose, her reflection shimmering in the newly-made field. “But see, darling, I’ve been drawn, redrawn, erased, colored outside the lines. I know a thing or two about creation. You want beauty to feed on? You’re looking right at it.”

You would give yourself?

“I’d share myself,” she said slowly. “If you make me something… more. Something real enough to outlast this dump.”

The brush hesitated. The air around it rippled like heat over asphalt. And what would you become?

She stepped closer, her perfume curling through the air like a spell. “I’ll be your muse. You’ll be my miracle. But you don’t eat me, sugar — you worship me.”

A silence fell, deep and trembling. Then the brush spoke: So be it.

It rose higher, as if gripped by invisible hands. Paint began to pour from its tip — a cascade of molten gold that wrapped around Holli, coiling over her arms, her hair, her dress. The room became a gallery of light and trembling sh
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