docholligay:

For the screen cap prompts, if it strikes your fancy

Anyone in her art classes who had heard her speak of a fondness for Monet’s Water Lilies would have laughed. How expected, they would think, how pedestrian to lavish affection on something so simple and common even a housewife might know it. 

But sometimes, that which was simple was loveliest of all, and she saw that in Monet, when she was eight years old at an exhibit. She stared at the painting that made her mother scoff, and she felt the calm of the blue and the violet washing over her, something centering and peaceful, a quiet relaxation she rarely knew, the buttresses and stone walls of her training and trimming gone, just for a moment. 

She had never known that feeling again, until she stood watching Haruka in the aquarium, a smile playing softly upon her face as she watched the fish dart in and out of the reef, her body not held at attention, but gently slumped, her shoulders down and her hands in her pockets, at perfect ease. 

There was no wall between them now, they no longer flew banners to amaze and impress the other, and so Haruka was not Proud Warrior Uranus, but simply a lanky young woman, straightforward and honest, a bit bashful at times, aching to be tender and slowly dismantling everything that would not allow it, brick by brick, in hand with Michiru. 

She was dazzlingly beautiful, in a way even Monet knew not of. 

“Oh,” she shrugged, “I feel most relaxed behind a steering wheel.” 

Simple and lovely. 

Michiru smiled teasingly, “How bold of you to assume I was speaking of the fish, you silly girl,” she turned, her hair flowing in the wind, giggling in true release, as if the bubbles of her own joy could not be contained. 

Haruka turned, and the the oils of true masterpiece painted a blush on her face.