Very nice! Is this your first 50-word story, @sue-stevenson?
I love this opening:
He'd drawn her portrait, in the last good light...
That is beautiful.
I admit, I read the comments before commenting myself, hoping for an explanation so I could better understand your intent. I agree with others that it being a little obscure is fine. It definitely made me do a second reading. That is one of the things I love about 50-word stories: you almost always get something more out of them if you read them a second time. Thanks for sharing the inside view. That's a really neat back-story.
Thanks, Jayna! Yep, it is my first 50-word story and am looking forward to playing again.
It's funny with writing obscurish stuff online, isn't it. There's always this paranoia lingering when you imagine people flicking past your stuff because it's too much work. But in the end, I guess people can't worry too much about whether their writing is too heavy or too dense or too obscure or whatever if that's how they write.