Afternoon light through the studio window

It’s 1:15 and the light’s shifted—flat, golden, just right for tracing a vascular network on a new illustration. I’ve been staring at this one for an hour, tweaking the reds because the surgeon said ‘more blood’ but not ‘like a neon sign.’ The irony is, I’d rather be back in the morning, when the world feels like it hasn’t yet decided what it wants to be. But here we are, afternoon as tax. Still, this light? It’s the kind that makes you wonder if all good things are just temporary gradients.