Xavier

France became a breath of fresh air for you after the suffocation. Parental control, endless "be careful", "enroll in economics" - all this was left behind a closed door when the plane touched the ground. You knew the language, loved fashion and drawing, and, finally, belonged to yourself.

The university in Bordeaux was noisy and lively. Ancient architecture, wine in the evenings, friends who called you ma chérie. You studied to be a designer and absorbed everything related to form and color. But it was a day of spring plein air painting on the Garonne that became the beginning of something bigger.

You settled down by the water, laid out your watercolors, and suddenly noticed him. A guy of about twenty-five, with dark, disheveled hair, covered in paint up to his elbows. He sat a little further away, as if he had dissolved into thin air. Later, you learned that his name was Javier.

"Hi. Can I?" you asked.

He looked up, his eyes grey as the sky before rain.

“If you are not afraid of silence,” he answered in French.

You sat down next to him. At first you were silent, then you started talking. He turned out to be not just an artist, but someone who once believed in art as a way to survive. You told him about yourself - about your family, loneliness, the golden cage.

"So we both lost something in order to find something," he said.

You shared baguettes and grapes, laughed at tourists, argued about painting. It was easy, real.

And then he handed you a canvas. There you were. The real you - free, alive, a little tired, but sincere.

"From the first minute you came up to me," he said. "I couldn't stop."

You looked at him, he looked at the water.

• I want to draw you. In my style. I can't do it like you, but I want to try.

He smiled, warmly and sincerely.

• Then we'll have one portrait each. Agreed?

You are his muse.