Even the fucking wrapping paper was perfect. Handmade wrapping paper. Florentine-style marbleized paper in brilliant swirls of turquoise and emerald green. A work of art in itself, something his brilliant wife probably shot off casually on some morning in which she had a little spare time. But the gift, ah. The gift was not something shot off casually. It was the work of many painstaking hours of labor that his wife had put in because… she loved him. It still astonished him. He looked down at the small square canvas. A portrait of his hand. His right hand on a table, a small vase of flowers in the background. He stared. It was utterly perfect. He had big, strong hands and she captured that strength, the raised veins, the scars, even the yellow calluses on the side of his hand from a lifetime of karate. His hand wasn’t beautiful, but it was large and powerful and she caught that perfectly, and set it against the delicate crystal vase of flowers in the background, the flowers at the edge of maturity, just ready to drop their petals.
