Awakening from a wonderful dream in which she dreamed about her grandfather, Charity felt wistful. In the dream, she was still a young girl. She had discovered a set of pigments in a trunk under her grandfather’s bed. The set contained all the colors of the rainbow. Each color was rich and vibrant when mixed with linseed oil and smeared onto her hand. They were intense, deep, colors… simply beautiful… In the dream, her grandfather turned to her and said, "Paint me a mountain, Child- paint me a mountain like the mountains in my homeland;" after which, she began outlining a scene on the back of a tanned deerskin hide. As she sat up in bed, she wondered what the dream meant. And, as she sat there and thought about it, she remembered the painting …show more content…
Dreading the thought of facing another day of the same old same, she took her time. She had never felt exactly this way before, however, she sort of felt similar to this after Jane’s abduction and desecration by Wheeler- and yes, it was a desecration. Wheeler had taken Jane’s innocence without her consent… Wheeler was like a black bile that had settled in her soul and was eating away what was left, causing her to feel filthy, immoral, and unsound. Charity felt that if she didn't get a grip on herself and find something to soothe her soul, she was going to wither away, she dressed in going out clothes; her naturalistic soul felt stifled, weighted, smothered down into a lump of blackened coal tar. Shaking off the melancholy feelings, she went into the front room and put on a pot of coffee. Later that morning, she left Martha and Jeremiah watching the children and walked to the Mercantile to inquire about the price of a set of pigments like the ones in her dream. Mr. Aderholt, the store proprietor, told her that he didn’t have much call for painting materials- but stated that a good set of pigments and brushes would cost her a pretty