Mockingbird stared ahead thoughtfully, letting his gaze wander until it fell upon a subject--a small flower, no taller than his thumb, with four bright-blue petals in a star arrangement. He picked up his pen and sketchpad, and padded over to the plant, sitting cross-legged in front of it. After a moment in which he tried to memorize all its details, he began to sketch.
Although his lines started off thin and delicate, by the time he was finished he was using slashing, bold strokes that got as much ink on the page as flew off into the grass. Holding up the finished sketch, he surveyed his handiwork critically, noting points where the lines didn't follow the right curve, or the detail was messy. Overall, it wasn't such a bad job, he thought, brushing an errant strand of hair out of his face and accidentally leaving a trail of black ink on his cheek.
He frowned as he noticed an oddity in the sketch. From a certain angle, the flower and its surroundings formed the outline of a girl, or a woman--similar to himself in features, and vaguely familiar, although he had no place or name to go with the face. She had been appearing in a number of his paintings recently, no matter how he tried to avoid it, and it was beginning to disturb him. It was like he was being haunted, but at the same time he couldn't bring himself to be frightened. If she was from his past, he would be glad for anything to help him remember.
At any rate, he doubted it detracted from the quality of the painting. Nobody besides him had noticed the phantom girl in her other paintings. As long as she didn't interfere with his artwork, she wasn't a problem. He found a flat rock and laid the paper out on it, weighting the corners with smaller stones to keep it from blowing away. Waiting for the ink to dry, he sat next to it, closing his eyes and letting the sounds around him wash over him. He could forget the phantom, he could forget everything--he was a leaf, a breeze, with no concerns.