There she sat, day after day.

Still in her poses. Silent and beautiful. She came to him, wordlessly. Ready. She was his muse. Not his first. Likely not his last. But she was under no assumptions of what this was. At least, so he believed. It was made clear at the start that this wasn’t about love, or romance. This wasn’t anything but her becoming his art. But she never spoke to give her opinion on the arrangement. She hasn’t said a single word since he brought her in. She has never even made eye contact. In fact, she has never really acknowledged his existence at all, outside of moving how he asked her to. One might think that she was captive, aside from the fact that she left whenever she wanted to, and showed up of her own volition every morning.

Normally, he was able to keep emotion out of it. Looking upon these figures as the source of his inspiration and nothing more. Normally, if there was any contact, it was they who encouraged the advancement of their time together from object and artist to physical, they would urge him into an evening tangled in sheets. Men and women alike had known his gentle touches, but none had known his love.

There was something different about this one. Perhaps that she largely ignored him. Perhaps that sly smile upon her lips that she never seemed able to let go of. That mysterious, unfathomable smile. It had angered him on the first day, but he’d grown to see the beauty of it by the second. She was definitely attractive, all his models were. It was not his bias, he knew that others would see it, too. He had been complimented on his muses his entire career. Whatever the cause of his infatuation, he wanted her. He felt things when he looked upon her that he’d never felt before. He wanted her. He needed her. For once, his wit and charm and charisma failed him. He could find no words to speak to her aside from instructions, nothing in him to convey his desires. He found himself mimicking her silence in frustrating perfection.