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( December 1983 )
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VALOR HAKIM WAS PRISTINE ARTWORK. Her daring golden eyes held every secret she's ever witnessed within their irises. Those unpainted nails being used to create folds in her own art whether it be on a canvas or something not exactly made for artwork. Then came her lean frame—staggering long legs that had brought her to the closest museum to her flat, dry slender fingers with clay buried within the creases, and finally came her heart. So close to dripping dry after each artwork she poured herself into, almost obsessively, just so it could be submitted to not be accepted in a museum.
But that's just what she happened to be staring at in the bleak midmorning of any other Thursday in winter.
Valor stared and stared and stared. Eyes wandering every crevice of each artwork in the museum she visited every Thursday just wondering why they had been there for longer than she had been visiting.
There had been one piece though—a fleshed head with a spinal cord merged into its cheek. Val believed it to be ugly compared to the more wholesome works around the building. The grotesque thing surrounded by sculpted tragic couples, hands with broken hearts in the palm, and plain portraits.
Standing at a slim five foot and ten inches, the girl could even see the very top of the piece seeing as it had been purposely placed in a high spot as compared to the man standing next to her who seemed to only be able to see the bottom and front.
Valor took a glance at him for a moment. Then another. And another and another and another. He was rather a spectacle to see beside such an abomination of art. If he was submitted as an artwork for the museum to consider putting up then he would be accepted in a heartbeat and pinned up on a wall that same day.
He turned to her and it was then that she found herself to be staring at him, but it was with reason. He was the closest thing to a masterpiece that she had ever seen.
Valor turned back to the sculpture. "Quite ugly, isn't it?" she queried as if her heartbeat had sped up within the last millisecond.
The man gave a soft chuckle and also turned. "I was thinking the same thing."
His voice. His voice made the artist wonder what the anatomy of his vocal cords looked like. If they were just as entrancing as his outsides.
"I've always wondered why they let such a thing in here with the other ones, it's just so..." she trailed off squinting at it.
"Grotesque," he said. Just the word she would've used.
She turned back to him after he said it and he turned just the same. "I like how you think," she complimented with a waving finger.
"And I like how you speak," he countered, eyes daring to trace her features as she had done to the misshapen sculpture.
Valor's breath hiccuped when he said that, a large gust of oxygen filling her ashen lungs while she debated what to do next. But all she decided to do was hold out her hand to the man. "Valor Hakim," she introduced herself.
The man removed his hand from the pocket of his coat to reveal a heavily ringed hand and clasped it with hers. "Sirius Black." He shone his pristine canine smile at her while their handshake held for a moment longer than any ordinary one would.
Val checked on the hung clock that patronized her introduction with a time well past what she usually stayed in the museum for. "I'm sorry to cut our introductions short," she released her hand from his and hid it back in her coat. "But I need to get going." She began walking away, shoes clicking against the granite grounds. Sirius seemed to be awestruck by such a tall woman in his presence that captured his attention so graciously that he barely understood her last words to him. "Do continue to examine that piece though, the artist is wonderful," she finally said.
Once she was out of sight, Sirius finally let go of a breath he hadn't known he had been holding in. Curious, he stared at the outlandish artwork and turned to the small inscription on a small glass plate plastered to the wall. A scoff let out past his lips once he read it as it had now gotten a new meaning for itself in his mind as he reread the name to see if he had been mistaken. But he wasn't.
Valor Hakim.
She had for sure been correct when she spoke about the artist being wonderful.
