“The Water Dweller’s Daughter” by Arah Ko is a fiction piece that is wonderfully imaginative and beautiful. The story is narrated by Morgan, a girl with an incredibly whimsical mother. The piece begins with her explain how her mother always paints with watercolors and how that has influenced her life. She has learned to appreciate the little things in art from her quirky mother. Ko’s comparison of watercolors to oil paint to her descriptions of their house is vividly captivating. One of my favorite lines is, “Light served as a many-colored palette, its goldgreenyellowwhiteblackbluered stained our walls, none of which were the same color, and made them ombre like the ocean.” I can picture her depiction and understand why the house is so stunning.

   Events occur later on in the story that causes her mother to change. However, when Morgan began to find the light in what occurred, I was trying to figure out what she was alluding to. It was not until the last line, which was the same one as her first, did everything really come full circle. Ko wrote, “Even now my mother paints in watercolor–even when she doesn’t.” By this she means that no matter what, her mother does not always have to do physical art in order to blend and create abstract images. Even after what happened, it was great to wtahc as Morgan’s mother never lost her eccentric character. I thought Arah Ko did a fantastic job putting art into words and explaining the essence of it.