The lake is gold; the mountains are a hundred different colours, blue-grey, pink, rust-red...

"I'm sure I'm not getting all the colours in the right places, but that's what the view across the Lake of Gold looks like. The Godscrest Mountains are kinda crazy." She flips the page and starts another version.

"It's beautiful."

Ruava smiles. "Yeah."

Draw draw draw. No that's not quite right, start again.

Kiss!

... Mmmm, maybe she shouldn't kiss Ruava when she starts over, it's rather a perverse incentive.

But it's so much fun!

It iiiiiis.

Jinx thinks she will grab another sketchpad quickly and sketch Ruava sketching her lake.

Well that's adorable.

Draw draw draw. It's a very pretty lake, and very pretty mountains, and hmm, she thinks she's done the best she can on the daytime view, time to try drawing it how it looks at night...

Uuuuugh she just can't get Ruava's smile right. Start over!

(That is a very pretty landscape though. Very very pretty.)

Hmm no she's got the light all wrong. Start over.

Kiss! Must not forget the kisses. 

(Why are expressions so hard.)

Eee, kiss!

Draw draw draw. Hmm, she can't tell what's wrong with this one but she can tell there's something - she sticks with it so she can figure out what the problem is. Something about the light, it's always the light, light is so hard. Which is hilarious when you think about it. What specifically is it about the light, though... oh, it's the way the moonlight reflects back onto the mountains from the water. Which is particularly hard to capture because it moves, and she cannot make the drawing move.

Jinx watches and draws. Expressions are still really hard and trying to capture a smile like Ruava's on paper is like trying to... do something really hard, Jinx doesn't have the spare brain for metaphors right now. 

She tries anyway.

She flips the page and starts over, trying to capture the shimmer.

Distracted kiss sketch sketch nope flip sketch sketch.

Hmmm... nope, this iteration isn't quite getting it either. Flip (kiss?) draw draw draw.

Kiss! Very kiss! 

(Wait, did Ruava just kiss her when she started over? ohgoshohgoshohgoshohgosh... Okay she's just put a line right through sketchy Ruava's chin. ...Flip?)

Draw draw draw - no, she's still not getting the light...

Maybe a different approach is required. She closes the sketchbook and closes her eyes and remembers the view from the palace roof and tries to build it out of light, a ghostly image floating in the air.

Oh gosh.

... she has the best girlfriend.

Even working with light directly like this, it's still hard to get it right. She builds it slowly, starting with vague blurry shapes and then filling in details and tweaking them and she made this mountain too short, why did she do that, no the skyline still looks wrong, oh it's that other mountain... and then she has to figure out how to get the movement right, and that's a whole new problem...

But eventually, she points at the floating landscape and says, "That's what the Lake of Gold looks like at night."

Moonlight glitters from the water, throwing thousands of faint ever-shifting reflections onto the mountains above. Every rippling wave makes its own contribution to the fountain of light. No wonder she couldn't get it down on paper. It's breathtaking.

Sorry, Ruava, if you were looking for comments: Jinx busy being enthralled.

Awwwwww.

... Kiss. 

(Jinx is still out of words, but she has remembered Ruava exists.)

Kisses are distracting. The image dissolves. Ruava hugs her adorable girlfriend.

Snug snug snug snug snug. 

Wonderful beautiful talented girlfriend.

Eeeee snuggles.