1: “I kind of feel like you're real.”

“If you look closely you can really see the stress lines in his face. It just captures so perfectly that moment of masculine sexual peak.”

Caia turned her head to the left, squinting a bit. No matter how she looked all she could see was a cheap hunk of clay that had been roughly shaped into man masturbating in a creepy crouch. It perfectly captured the moment of creepy sexual peak.

It wasn't that she was unfamiliar with sexual based art. Sex in art was a common theme, she saw it all the time. She had seen works depicting much more graphic things than this statue. So it wasn't the content that bothered her.

What bothered her was that the artist had no style and very little talent and was trying to cover for that with a blatant, crude effigy of sex that was both bland and unoriginal.

“Looks a bit like my ex.” McKenzie's statement was so blunt and dry that it made Caia snicker.

The shopkeeper was very good at his job. The twitch in his eye was almost unnoticeable. It probably wouldn't have been there at all if McKenzie hadn't been making such comments all day.

Caia and McKenzie loved going to museums and art galleries and art stores. As sculptors themselves, doing any of those things was a fun weekend for them. However, at art stores, they often ran into plain things like this. She had to admit that the seller was doing his best to talk it up.

It wasn't even that it was ugly. There was an entire branch of art that was 'ugly'. McKenzie made such pieces all the time. She found pretty things to be boring and uninspiring. In the ugly and the crude and shocking she could see the fundamental nature of things, so she said.

Caia found it funny that McKenzie enjoyed the ugly so much considering that she herself was so very pretty. She was very tall and her willowy, thin frame belied what Caia knew was a very strong, tough woman. Her Irish ancestry was made obvious by her pale skin and flaming red hair. She had been Caia's friend for a few months now ever since Caia had joined the sculptors' group that met every week at the recreation center. Though McKenzie had been in the group for years, Caia was the first one she had gotten really close to.

Which surprised Caia more than a little. While McKenzie liked ugly art, Caia herself was into the beauty of realism.

Caia was at least half a foot shorter than McKenzie. She wasn't willowy, she had just deep curves that filled out her small frame. Her short hair was dark red, almost auburn, and bounced happily around her face, only ever constrained by a headband. Her small, pert nose sat above a pair of delicate lips and below a pair of dark hazel, almond shaped eyes. People that met her said that Caia looked like a doll. She took that to mean that she was pretty, but uninteresting visually.

Which was fine. Caia would rather be known by her art than her face. That was where she put her personality and her heart. The sculptures she made were an extension of herself, part of her. If someone must judge her, she would prefer they do it from that.

“Well, you two are obviously connoisseurs of art. I'll just leave you to browse on your own.” The salesman turned, finally overcome with his annoyance with them.

“Took him longer than most,” McKenzie remarked.

Caia shrugged and continued down the rows of sculptures. “You could stand to be a little more kind to them. They're only doing their job.”

“Maybe if they knew art I would be.”

“They know art. They just have to sell art that isn't even worth the title sometimes. You have to admit, he was better at talking it up than most.”

McKenzie shrugged, uncaring. She was an aloof kind of woman that enjoyed cutting remarks and harsh judgments. Another opposite to Caia's happy, understanding personality.

The next sculpture they came upon wasn't bad. Titled 'Flower', it was a metal sculpture with long wire pieces of something silver that had been wrapped around and around into a beautiful shape that didn't at all resemble a flower. However, it did feel floral. Caia could understand it and even McKenzie looked at it, pleased.

“So how's your latest project coming?” Caia asked as they observed the sculpture.

She shrugged. “Well enough. There's something missing from it though and I'm not sure what it is. It's quite troubling. I may have to break it and start again.”

Caia grimaced in sympathy. In creating, sometimes something just did not come out how you wanted it to. That was just an unfortunate fact of being an artist. You could leave it the way it was, even though it did not come perfectly to life. Or you could destroy it. Artists tended to do the second far more than the first. If it wasn't perfect, it wasn't worth making.

“And yours?”

“I'm almost finished,” Caia beamed. “I want to smooth down the stone in a few more places, but really I couldn't be happier with how it turned out.”

McKenzie tended to work with many materials. Metal, glass, stone, clay, wax, wood; pretty much anything that she felt worked with her piece. Conversely, Caia was dedicated to stone. Granite, clay, alabaster; sometimes even semi-precious stones such as jade, onyx, or carnelian. There was just a beauty in stonework that Caia enjoyed more than any other.

Both of them loved sculpting. It was a passion more than a hobby and often something that drove them to distraction. It was also something that neither of them did for a living. McKenzie's 'ugly' sculptures were hard to sell but usually quicker to make than Caia's that sold easier but took a great deal more time to finish. Neither of them being famous made selling any piece rare though. So they both worked a day job.

McKenzie worked for a plumping company as a bored but efficient secretary. She was great at the job but lacked people skills. Since all they really needed her to do was keep the appointment book, her bosses didn't really care.

Caia's was a waitress. She was fresh out of a stint at a two year college and hadn't been able to get a job with her little art degree which didn't at all surprise her. She supposed that she didn't mind slinging burgers to hungry people.

Talking absently about their work, they moved onto the next sculpture then the next and on through the showroom. A startlingly realist hawk made of wood and paint gave way to a glass goblet that had been carefully and meticulously decorated with colored images of people dancing around the cup which in turn was replaced by a hunk of stone that looked as if it had been mercilessly beaten to show jagged and wicked looked quartz inside. McKenzie took interest in the last one.

Each piece was admired and critiqued as the two of them walked through. It wasn't often that they actually bought the art for sale. They weren't rich and if they bought every piece that caught their eye they would be buried in art in no time.

Then they turned the corner and came upon a small, paperweight style sculpture that Caia knew immediately she must have.

“Look at this,” she cried excitedly, leaning down to get a better look.

“Eh. I'm not impressed,” McKenzie looked at her fingernails, bored with the piece already. Admittedly, she hadn't looked at it all that hard.

Caia waved her answer away as she peered closer.

It was about the size of a shoebox. It was a man, a warrior, that had fallen to the ground. However, even in defeat, he was raising his sword to fend off his opponent. The closer Caia looked, she more impressed she became.

The statue was just so realistic! She could make out his minute eyelashes, the creases on his miniature clothes, even the fingernails on his tiny hands. The muscles under his skin were so believable and accurate that it looked as if he might begin moving any minute. The little warrior was made of some kind of bronze colored stone that Caia didn't recognize but shined beautifully under the light of the showroom.

The man himself was handsome. He had strong features, exactly what she imagined a warrior would look like. It was hard to tell with his face bunched into a snarl but Caia imagined that the little stone man would be quite a looker if he were real.

The only thing that detracted from the statue was the base it sat on. The boring, square stone of it was of a slightly different color and, when Caia looked closer, she could see the adhesive that had been used to glue the statue onto it. The site actually made her mad.

Who would dare desecrate such a beautiful piece by gluing it to a base? She got so mad that she might have made the piece herself.

“I'm going to get this,” she declared, picking it up form its pedestal. And when she got home she would apply some solvent and remove the ugly base as quickly as she could. She almost felt like she was saving it in a way.

“Why?” McKenzie asked, surprised. Sure, it was almost photo realistic, but she couldn't imagine why any true artist would want it. There were plenty of realistic sculptures of warriors. True, they weren't usually so small, but she didn't understand what else made it so special.

But McKenzie couldn't feel the instant attraction that Caia had to the small man. Even just the way it fit into her hand was pleasing, and Caia smiled. Sometimes you just knew. And she knew that this statue was meant to be hers.

The salesman, sensing a real sale, was there in a moment the smile back on his face.

Ten minutes later, Caia and McKenzie left the shop. Caia was smiling down at her paper shopping bag that had her new sculpture carefully wrapped in tissue paper inside.

“I'm going to put it on my mantle. Once I take off the base, of course. Did you see? Someone glued it on! How completely tacky and rude is that?”

McKenzie grimaced. There was nothing more insulting and even hurtful to an artist than altering their work. Caia was sure that the maker of this piece would feel just as insulted at seeing the base as Da Vinci himself would if someone scribbled a mustache over the Mona Lisa.

“Well, I suppose if you're saving it, then I can get behind the piece. I just don't find it all that interesting myself.”

“If he were battling some kind of ugly tentacle monster with three mouths, eleven eyes, and two of those missing would you like it?”

McKenzie actually thought about it for a moment. “You know, it probably wouldn't hurt.”

Caia laughed and they got into McKenzie's car to go to their next destination. Caia lovingly stored her new statue in the backseat and smiled at it before returning her attention to her friend.

Instead of another art store, this time McKenzie pulled them in front of a shoe store. The pair of them might be artistsm but they were still female, they had all of a female's needs. And McKenzie had a weakness for shoes.

Though her artwork was dark, McKenzie dressed rather conservatively. Usually plainly, in two colors, with little attention drawn to the outfit. However, she had a shoe for every occasion and was constantly adding to her collection.

Caia didn't share that obsession, but she did so enjoy being McKenzie's enabler. They walked eagerly into the store like kids into a candy shop and McKenzie immediately got to work making another salesman hate her.

Caia was determined not to buy anything herself after the statue. But she loved trying on all the high heels. Which was foolish because she couldn't walk in them at all and was constantly under the threat of tripping over the absurdly long stilts and breaking her neck. But she did love seeing her feet in the beautiful footwear.

They may not be something she might buy for fear of hurting herself, but the brightly colored and lavishly decorated heels that McKenzie also loved would have gone well with her style. Caia liked to wear bright colors, often adorning herself with flowers or small pieces of the semi-precious stones that she herself carved. There was a tiny carnelian rock attached to the chain around her waist of a couple in the middle of a waltz. Like a charm bracelet, the waist chain also had a few other keepsakes around it. There was a tiny tiger lily, a miniscule rainbow rose, and a few pieces that had fake precious stones just hanging from the chain. She always wore it, she loved it.

She also tended to only wear skirts to show it off best and shirts that just barely showed the crease at her belly. Her headband almost always had decorations on it. This one had a fake sunflower right above where her ear was. Some people said that her love of colors and flowers only made Caia look more like a doll. She was sure that was their way of saying she looked like a child.

But she didn't care. She liked the way she dressed. She liked bright colors. And, even though she couldn't bring herself to wear the dangerous heels, she did wear flats and very small heels in shoes of all kinds. And yes, some of them had flowers.

So while McKenzie was adding a third pair of shoes to the pile of ones that she was most definitely buying, Caia was walking down the isles looking for a pair of shoes in her size that were always very difficult to find. Most women didn't wear one inch high mary-janes with big ribbons or flowers or jewels on them. Finding stuff in her style and size was rare. It was a good thing that Caia was so small herself, often being mistaken for a young teenager instead of a grown woman. If she were bigger, it might be impossible to find something she liked.

They dithered in the store for about an hour just having the time of their lives. By the time that they came out, McKenzie had four new pairs of shoes and Caia had one that she had found in the little girl's section that she both fit into and loved.

“I think I might be a child,” she told McKenzie as they stacked the shoes next to her statue.

McKenzie shrugged. “I would say that stems from not getting enough love from your parents when you were young. You're still holding onto your youth in the hopes that you might someday get that love. It's tragic really.”

Caia blinked. Then she burst into laughter as she sat down. “Are you trying to double as a therapist?”

“Nah, I just like living vicariously through people who had sad childhoods.”

Caia shook her head, smiling. McKenzie had more love and support from both of her loving and attentive parents than anyone that Caia knew. She was like the poster child for a normal, well adjusted family daughter. She grew up in the suburbs, her parents had been high school sweethearts and never fought a day in their marriage, and McKenzie had received only praise and encouragement when she told them she wanted to be an artist.

It made McKenzie quite unhappy that she didn't have a single thing in her past that she could say was sad or traumatic. Artists, she believed, should be inspired from a place of pain and sorrow that could be traced to moments in their pasts. McKenzie had no such moments and it only made her angry.

Which only made Caia laugh harder. As someone who had grown up in a dysfunctional household she couldn't imagine anyone wanting what she had.

Their day off together continued with a stop at a few clothing shops, two more art galleries, an antique store, and a final stop at their favorite museum in the city. They spent far too much money, laughed at everything, and had so much fun that everything else seemed to melt away.

By the time that McKenzie was driving Caia home they were both tired from the good time that they had and Caia had forgotten about her new statue. At least until she began unloading her things and found the store's bag and smiled.

It took two trips to bring all of her stuff inside. She set most of it on her couch.

But her new statue she pulled from the bag and carefully peeled off the paper before lovingly setting it on her coffee table. Caia smiled at it happily, reaching out to stroke his little face. He looked just right in her home, she imagined that he would look better on her mantel.

Once she removed the base of course.

Caia frowned at the offensive stone block and touched it instead, wondering what kind of glue had been used. Depending on the type, the solvent she used may or may not work. She wanted to know what kind of stone he was made of too. She would definitely not want to put a chemical on it that might effect it.

Especially not something with such beautiful color and exquisite detail. The longer Caia looked at the little man the more astounding he was to her. Her eyes just kept finding more and more details that were so realistic as to seem impossible on such a tiny piece.

“Did someone model you?” she asked the statue as she tilted her head around to look into his miniature eyes. “Or were you completely from your artist's imagination? I want to think that you are real. You just look so perfect it's hard not to imagine you as real.”

Silence. The angry snarl on his face seemed almost comical in the face of her sweet words.

“How old are you? Who made you?”

Curios, she picked up her little man and turned over, looking for a signature or maker's mark. There was nothing. Not even so much as a simple 'Made In China' anywhere on him.

Humming thoughtfully to herself, she set him back down. She couldn't imagine that anyone would create such a flawless and perfect statuette with such skill and love and not put their mark somewhere on it. Maybe it was under the base. Maybe that's why the base had been added. It was possible that the statue had been stolen then the original owner's mark covered up so it could be sold.

It which case, Caia was going to be furious. Stealing someone's art and passing it off as your own was like stealing a piece of themselves. It was a horrible, wrong thing to do and Caia hated the very thought of it.

“I'll find out who made you,” she promised her little man. “And if you were stolen, I'll return you. Until then, I hope you like this place. It's a bit messy at the moment but it's homey. There are a lot of friends for you and the décor isn't bad if I say so myself.”

Chuckling at herself, Caia took a quick look around her house. Her new statue wasn't the only piece of art around. She had many things siting on end tables, on her mantel, a large dog statue in one corner, and more than a few paintings. A few pieces were hers, most were gifts from friends. All of Caia's furniture was white or gray so that the eye went instead to the art that she preferred to have displayed and prominent. There were no photos of family anywhere, but she more than made up for it with brilliant paintings. She didn't have any dust collectors, but you could almost be forgiven for thinking that all the statues big and small were just that.

In a way, Caia lived in an art gallery and she loved it. The beauty of everything around her made her smile and feel. There was even a piece by McKenzie sitting next to the door. The creepy looking bowl that appeared to have been made of spider carcasses that had each of their tiny eyes gouged out was the ugliest thing in her house, but Caia loved it nonetheless. As a gift from her best friend, she could do nothing else.

She looked back at her new statue and blinked curiously. The tiny man had such a direct gaze. The artist really had spent a great deal of time on his miniature face. Caia felt like his miniscule eyes were watching her closely and she reached out to stroke his face with her fingertip.

“I kind of feel like you're real,” she whispered to him as she leaned her head on her arm on the coffee table. “You just look so...detailed. It's incredible.”

A loud honking broke her thoughts and she lifted her head again to look out of her open door. She heard McKenzie's yell even in here.

“Hurry up! We've only got ten minutes to get there!”

Caia laughed and looked back her man. “We've got group. It's a little sculptors club. We call ourselves the Chiselers. It's kind of stupid, but we like it. I'll take you there someday and show you off. I know the others will find you just as amazing as I do. Except McKenzie but don't listen to her. She thinks a bowl of spider corpses is pretty.”

Caia stood up and looked around. “Okay guys, I'm off. Be nice to the new guy. I'll be back in a few hours and I might have another new friend for you. Donald says he's finally bringing me that bust he promised to make for me. See you all later.”

Waving at her art, knowing that if anyone found out she talked to the pieces they would think she was completely nuts, Caia left the house and locked the door behind her.

McKenzie would say that she didn't receive enough attention as a child and that was why she insisted on speaking to inanimate objects as though they were real. She was craving real human love and substituted that feeling with her statues and paintings.

That might be true but Caia refused to admit it.

Instead, she said that each piece of art came with its own life. There was just something special and vital about a good piece that gave it that spark of life that all living things had. In which case, Caia wasn't talking to a bunch of inanimate objects.

No, she was talking to a group of very attentive friends who were great listeners and were always there for her. Friends that would never turn their backs to her or leave her behind without so much as a backwards glance. Even when all of her current friends had moved away from her, the art would always be there. She could count on them as she could count on no living person.

Caia knew full well that it wasn't a healthy view. She didn't really care. She felt safe talking to and trusting her art. And until the day that another human gave her that same feeling she would continue to do so.

She wasn't crazy, she was just...quirky.