Stress Painting

Lately, Razyr had been feeling the stress of life climb upon him like a persistent Slowpoke. He couldn't shake the anxiety he woke with every morning, and throughout the day he could tell that his mood and attitude would be affected because of the lingering cloud hanging over him. So when Saturday rolled around and he found himself laying in bed at the ripe hour of seven am...he decided he'd had enough.

"Delilah, close the shop for me will you?" He spoke down to his Totodile with a forced smile, who just blinked up at him in confusion. Of course, the pokemon couldn't close the shop, but Razyr liked pretending. Like he did with so many other things perhaps. Luckily everything was automated, so Razyr just swiped away on the digital display in his kitchen while his coffee brewed, and he knew that down below the shop would be switching to its closed state. Sure, some would be disappointed, but he needed today to reset himself. Luckily for him, the special man in his life didn't need to be told - he'd be asleep by now anyway, nocturnal ass.

Once his coffee was ready and everything was in order, Razyr walked across the apartment to the not often used but dearly loved room, mug in hand and Peony following behind him eagerly.

Inside, the room was filled with luscious plants, maintained by his pokemon because he couldn't be trusted with things as finicky as this, beautiful natural light streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows that covered every wall.

"Ah, been humid in here," Razyr commented softly, turning to the atmospheric controls on the wall and adjusting them so more than just plants and plant-based pokemon would be comfortable in here. "There we go."

His next order of business was to set up shop for the day. Well, figuratively speaking. His materials were stored in a glass panel in the wall, and he wasted no time setting down his coffee and going for them. His easel was already stationed in the center of the room, so all he needed were the paints and the canvas. He chose a medium-sized one, for his medium-sized stress ball.

More of his pokemon wandered in while he set up. Delilah came in, to water and prune the plants with a delicate touch. Peony made himself comfortable on the little bench near the window, under the massive leaves of the fig tree and bird of paradise. Lily toddled in and curled up underneath Peony's perch, and even Bloober must have snuck in at some point because the pokemon was sitting on one of the tables near the door.

Setup, Razyr practically collapsed on the plush and paint-covered stool in front of his easel. The warm sun on his back was having immediate effects, and his coffee was left forgotten on a nearby table as he got to work.

He spent nearly an hour just mixing paints, getting them 'ready' for whatever his mind decided to fixate on. The amount of free therapy he got just doing that should be criminal, he thought with a smirk.

The first brushstrokes Razyr made on the canvas were instinctive, uninspired, and certainly not purposeful. He went for bright, bold colors out of habit and just splashed some color on, essentially. The nonsensical way he did this didn't bother him, in fact, if anything it helped him to calm down enough to actually find a direction. By the time he was done 'messing around' most of his canvas was filled with color - and none of them made sense.

For the next few hours, Razyr untangled what he'd done. Finding the shapes his mind wanted to see and reforming them, painting over some other colors entirely as the image came to the fore of his mind and he replicated it on the canvas. His pokemon never disturbed him, simply watched as he spilled his anxieties and stress out onto the canvas to his heart's content.

By the time he was finished, there was quite the scene on the canvas before him and the sun was absent from the sky behind him. Razyr sighed, happily, as he wiped even more paint from his face that he'd accumulated over the day.

Proudly, he looked over his work, an almost boneless feeling about him as his little painting session had done its job.

It was the ocean as he remembered it, from years past, and not as it was today - filled with dangerous fusions and corruption, blanketed by fog that was always visible on the horizon. Bright colors decorated the sky above, reflecting serenely on the waters below, with not an ounce of trouble in sight. The feeling invoked by the scene was one of peace, maybe a little hope, and Razyr realized that was what he'd been missing recently.

With a happy little smile, he stood, leaving the painting for a few days to dry and settle before he would return to it and add in any details and his signature. Someone would buy it for a nice price, he was sure, since his side business to the ball making was rather lucrative, but Razyr had someone in mind for this one already.

Not bothering to shower away a day's worth of work and paint, Razyr collapsed into bed - a peaceful and anxiety-free sleep pulling him under in minutes as his pokemon gathered around him happily.