He meandered purposelessly within the legion of homogenous bystanders. He felt, as he had often felt, alone and adrift in the ever-broadening ocean of the faceless, the merciless and the self-serving. Only the sudden offering of canapés broke the indistinguishable, ambient noise of monotonously delivered, insincere pleasantries and recycled clichés. A young lady stood before him, a porcelain smile fastened on her symmetrically manufactured visage, a fascinatingly luminescent silver tray in hand. The tray was adorned with a singular, spherical sweet, which the woman described only as “just for you”. As he reached for the offering, he encountered an abrupt notion of déjà vu, yet the captivating shimmer of the sliver distracted him from his thoughts. He cradled the sweet in hand and admired it, feeling a warm sense of ardour and appreciation wash over him. He had long felt a hunger gathering force in the pit of his belly, a hunger only a treat such as this could assuage. Before he could express his gratitude he saw that she was gone from him, offering the very same gift to each and everyone that passed her by. As he observed her spreading her favour without prejudice or consideration, he realized again his insignificance and put the sweet to his lips in attempt to retain some of the joyousness he felt absconding from his fragile psyche; joyousness that was so unfamiliar and infrequent in his life.

The spherical canapé offered a fleeting moment of saccharine bliss, then disintegrated into a harsh, biting dust that caused his face to spasm and his eyes to weep. He charged towards the garbage container in the corner of the room, in doing so he interrupted an older gentleman’s anecdote concerning some weighty disapproval of the liberal youth, an opinion he could have sworn he had heard several times elsewhere that night. He regurgitated the bitter soot into the waste bin, and rested a moment to regain his senses.

Once sure that no vomit was to follow, he turned and leant back on the waste drum, surveying the gallery, sensing starkly once again his lack of place amidst such interminable collective conformity, the monochrome lifelessness. That was when he glimpsed her. Exhibited between a 16th century rock and a dull place. She stood, strikingly distinctive, an eruption of radiant technicolour eclipsing the stygian of black and white uniformity that surrounded her. Never had such soft, exquisite brushes of colour seemed so vibrant and pronounced. He was overwhelmed with a sensation that simultaneously calmed his erratic, ponderous mind and exhilarated his stubborn, leaden heart. It was in the slightest details of her charming canvas that he recognised her true beauty, her grace: the gentleness of her strokes, the subtlety of her messages, the depth of her colouring. He distinguished a profound splash of delicate hazel that sat alone in contrast to the vibrancy of all her other hues, and found himself immersed for a time in immeasurable enchantment, as if he were staring into her eyes, and her in his. Intuitively he felt her being and her beauty transcended all the hatred, the selfishness and the cruelty that plagued his existence and he felt himself rise to join her; rise beyond his own self-loathing and purposelessness, into a state of being reserved only for joy, acceptance, kindness, love. He had never known such reverence.
He dared to approach her. As he advanced, a smile blooming on his lips, he marvelled in the periphery of his vision at the crowds of the heartless and the disapproving as they melted away, until there was only her. He stood beneath her, mounted with such poise on the display stand above him, and extended his trembling hand. As he reached for what he now knew he desired over all else, he felt his newly animated heart palpitating fiercely. Offering a single prayer: the touch of her soft canvas would be his saviour, that this once, she would not turn to dust and regret at his.