5 am

by KopaLeo

Tick tock, tick tock.

Artline grumbles and turns on her plain bed. The hot summer is making it even harder to fall asleep. She rolls to see the clock on her nightstand.

4:50

“Dammit.” Artline sighs, “I’ll have a migraine tomorrow at work, at this rate.“

She drops to the ground and lights a candle, feeling far too bored to just passively wait for sleep. She puts the candle on the nightstand and watches the light refract through the gems, and dance on her beloved tanto’s blade.

She stares at the tanto, the feeling coming back to her again.

“… maybe I should… maybe… I should ask it.“

She trots to the chest on the other side of her bedroom, and rummages inside, until she finds the deck of tarots she used to play in high school.

She shuffles the deck, spreads it out, then picks out 6, and reads them out, one by one.

“…“

5:02

“What could this mean…?”

——

What to do when you can’t sleep?

Draw your best friend ElskaFox having insomnia!

This has a lot of details, please look at full resolution. Took me two years a long time to paint!

The back of the tarots are based on actual tarots that ElskaFox has.

——

The tarots: Ace of wand, tower, death, 5 of cups, 10 of swords, 2 of cups.

The ace of wands means beginnings/creation; so the beginning of the friendship between Artline and Cosmia.

The tower is symbolic of Artline’s desire to cause harm. It’s symbolic of destruction/darkness/change

The death card might be literal for the painting, but in tarot it also means endings and transformations/beginnings

5 of cups is loss and difficulty. The time they spend in limbo.

10 of swords. Betrayal, inevitable end.

2 of cups. Balance, friendship. Artline and Cosmia forgive one another.