Palette of Dreams: a mysterious shop, a faded artist, and a second chance (A Free Cozy Fantasy Short Story)

 “You’re so talented,” they said. “You see things other people miss. You should be an artist.”

Well, some people said so. Not everyone. Certainly not her parents. “You’ll struggle,” they said. “The term’s ‘starving artist’ for a reason.”

But Constance hadn’t listened. She’d mixed her pigments and created art—bright swirls that breathed, bold lines that sang, and bursts of color that seemed to pulse with life.

She’d quickly found success: a showing at a prestigious gallery, a party in her honor, the dazzling lights of flashbulbs, and a glowing article in an art magazine.

But trends change, and stars who burn hot, burn fast. As her youth faded, so did her popularity. The galleries turned cool and white, favoring abstraction and irony. They no longer wanted her art, no longer wanted her style, no longer wanted her.

When the money ran out, Constance took a day job. Just like her parents had wanted. A dull job. An office job. A job where no one cared that she’d once been the darling of the local art scene. Nobody cared that her paintings had hung on gallery walls. Nobody cared… at all.

She continued to paint, of course. She couldn’t not create. But as her world turned dull, so did her art. The jars of bright colors she’d once favored gathered dust like old memories. She mixed her pigments in muddy hues, favoring grays and browns. The reds dulled to rust, the blues to bruises. If no one had wanted her art before, they certainly spurned it now.

Her life had become as dull as her art. Same old, same old, day in, day out. She rose at the same time, walked the same weary route, sat at the same cheap desk, answering the same questions over and over and over. Then, home again, putting one foot in front of the other.

Outside, the world still shifted and glimmered—seasons changing, lights blinking in windows—but Constance moved through it as if underwater.

Nothing changed. Nothing ever would.

Except that it did.

Constance often worked late—not because there was so much work to do, but to avoid returning to her tiny apartment that served as home, studio, refuge, and prison.

Trudging home in the dark, resigned to a meal of the same leftovers she’d eaten all week, Constance came across a new shop on the old route. She stopped to stare. It wasn’t that a new store had opened in an existing location. No—it was that the tiny shop had squeezed in between two buildings, appearing in the hours since she’d walked this route at dawn.

Quill’s Dream Emporium, the shop sign read, in ornate gold letters. The building didn’t look new; it looked like something out of a Victorian painting, complete with a wine-colored façade and heavy gold curtains drawn against the night.

And the display—ah, the display. Crystals, strange ornaments, and curious objects she couldn’t name, each glowing faintly as though lit from within. Leather-bound books lay open to detailed illustrations, their colors impossibly bright, like pages freshly printed a century too late.

And at the center of it all slept a fat black cat, tail twitching as it dreamed.

She entered. How could she not? The bell above the door chimed a single, perfect note—like the sound of glass being touched by light.

A man in a cream-colored linen shirt and a green velvet waistcoat greeted her, a huge smile splitting his whiskery face.

“Welcome,” he called. “How can I help you?”

“How can you…?” She trailed off. “What do you sell here?” she asked, feeling foolish.

“Why, dreams, of course.” Stepping out from behind an oak display counter, he swept a low bow. “Leander Quill, merchant of dreams, at your service.”

She almost turned and fled, but without seeming to move, he was suddenly before her, gesturing toward a chair. She meant to head toward the door. Really, she did. But instead found herself seated in a burgundy velvet slipper chair, the kind Queen Victoria herself might have ruled from.

“Tell me about yourself,” the man said, taking a similar seat a few feet away. And before she could stop herself, she told him her story—spilling it out like paint water, cloudy and thin.

“An artist, hmmm.” He scratched his thick, curly sideburns, then leapt to his feet. “Why, I do believe I have exactly what you need.” He dashed behind his display case and through a curtained door into a hidden back room.

Not what you want, she mused as she awaited his return. But what you need.

She could hear Leander Quill rummaging around behind the velvet curtain. Exactly how big was this place? Hadn’t it been a narrow alley between the pawn shop and the nail salon? Barely room for a dumpster. She frowned, trying to recall the gap that used to be there, but the harder she tried, the less certain she became that there had ever been an alley at all.

Leander reappeared, handing her a wooden case about the size of a businessman’s briefcase. “Here’s everything you need.”

“I don’t—” she began to protest, rising, trying to hand the item back to him.

“No charge,” he said, his smile widening.

Later, Constance couldn’t recall leaving the shop, or the long walk home to save the bus fare.

At home, she opened the wooden box. Inside was a palette of bright greens and reds, blues and yellows—the colors she hadn’t mixed in years, the hues of long-ago summers.

Shoving the case to one side, she reheated her leftovers with disgust. The usually bland meal tasted bitter on her tongue.

She fell into bed, exhausted not from her hours at her boring desk job, but from having to be there, having to survive. That night, she dreamed—something she had done little of in recent years.

In her dream, the walls of her apartment dissolved into a forest. The air was thick with the scent of earth and rain. Constance traipsed through the dark, forbidding woods. Guttural sounds and animal noises dogged her steps. Eyes glared at her from the undergrowth. Terrified, she wanted to run, but her feet were mired in dark, grasping mud.

A twig snapped behind her, but when she turned, there was nothing there. Or at least nothing she could see. Nor were there any footprints telling her which way she’d come.

Although she had no idea if she was headed toward safety or danger, she picked up the pace. Anywhere was better than here.

An eternity later, something caught her attention—a thread of light, trembling ahead like a line of gold on black canvas. Were the trees thinning? Why, yes, she believed they were.

She began to run toward the light, her feet suddenly free, the mud releasing her as though in apology.

All around her, mushrooms of all shapes and sizes sprang up along the path, shooting from the rich, dark loam. Reaching the edge of the forest, she burst into a sun-kissed meadow, panting and squinting in the bright sunshine. The air shimmered, the colors alive; the warmth of the sun humming softly through her bones.

Flowers grew as high as her waist on either side of an inviting path. As she moved along the trail, a butterfly, newly emerged from its chrysalis, landed on her wrist, wings flapping as they dried. The flowers, the butterfly, the sunshine on her skin—it was all too much, and she began to sob, tears trickling down her cheeks. She cried for the art she hadn’t made, and for the years she’d wasted.

In the distance, a harsh bell sounded. Her alarm, set for dawn. She opened her eyes, sorry to leave the bright meadow behind. For a breathless moment, the dream clung to her like a veil; the colors refusing to fade.

She called in sick that day. It was Friday, so she could lose herself in the new color palette for three whole days.

All weekend she barely ate, barely slept—just painted and painted. Her apartment filled with the smell of linseed oil and take-out pizza. She’d hoarded canvases over the years, and now, one after the other, they came to life beneath her hands.

She started with butterflies, meadows, and flowers, but quickly moved on to more meaningful scenes. The bright colors in Leander’s palette never seemed to deplete. She’d rinse her brushes, certain she’d reached the bottom of the wells, only to find the pigments glowing again—softly, like embers refusing to die.

But these paintings were ordinary. They were practice. A way to reacquaint herself with her soul.

Now she was ready. She retrieved her old palette of dark, serious colors, and worked them onto the next canvas, melding and clashing with the bright new hues. Soon she had a painting she could be proud of—a meeting of shadow and light, grief and grace. One that would leave her mark on the art world.

When she walked to work on Monday, paint of all hues under her fingernails, she stopped in her tracks. Quill’s Dream Emporium was gone. Only a grimy dumpster sat stinking in the alley between the pawn shop and the nail salon.

In a cold sweat, she dashed home. Had she imagined the whole thing? But no—the case of bright paints sat open on her table, looking barely touched.

And the new painting, the one that would change her life, sat on her little folding easel. The canvas shimmered faintly in the morning light, still drying like delicate butterfly wings. Dark colors painted the background—the shabby pawn shop and the garish nail salon—which only made the bright, cheery display seem more real than its surroundings.

And the sign, in gold leaf gothic lettering, seemed to leap off the page the way its tawdry neon neighbors never could: Quill’s Dream Emporium.

Beneath it, in much smaller letters, a line she hadn’t painted, but was there all the same: Purveyors of what you most need.

END

Thank you for reading Palette of Dreams: A mysterious shop, a faded artist, and a second chance, a free cozy fantasy short story by Gina X. Grant. Enjoy this story? Check out Agatha's First Murder, a free prequel to The Unlikely Murder Club series.