“I can read it out loud, if you’d like,” he offered. “Keep our minds off the storm.”

“Okay.” Manasa smiled softly and snuggled back against his chest. Marth shifted to make her more comfortable and slipped his arm more closely around her shoulder as he opened the book again.

“‘Simion and the Water Lady’,” Marth read aloud. The sky rumbled overhead, shaking through the ship. Manasa shivered and cuddled closer. Marth raised his voice a little. “Deep in the woods, south of the village of Gnarr, on the banks of the river, where the flowers bloomed and the reeds grew tall, lived a young knight named Simion, who every morning awoke to the sounds of singing on the water.” Manasa sighed, drinking in his voice and the clear, precise way he formed the words on the tip of his tongue as he read.

--"Among the Ashes", by *CallistoHime

***



Needless to say, this could be one of the best color jobs I've done yet. And one of the toughest.

For *CallistoHime's coloring contest, because I wanted to and I could. So there.

So I had to redo the lineart, because working with the sketch just was not working at all. It was so frustrating. >_< So I did the lineart, which destroyed my wrist. Next day, I finished it (ALL OF IT DONE IN TWO DAYS), with all the colors on the two painted on Photoshop, and the blanket and wood paneling was painted on there as well. And now I have a fading headache behind my left eye from staring at this for several hours straight.

to Chrissy for being awesome! I hope you and everyone else enjoys this as much as I do (or at least, as much as I do now that it's done ).

Marth belongs to Nintendo, and Intelligent Systems, and whatever.

Manasa and Among the Ashes belong to *CallistoHime, along with the original lineart, which can be found here: [link]

Coloring and such was all moi!