Her eyes slowly fluttered open.
For a moment, she just stared blankly at the ceiling. Then, as her gaze shifted, it landed on the wall across the room.
There, lined up neatly, were seventeen beautiful paintings—all made by her mother. Each one carried a memory, a story, a piece of her soul.
That's when it hit her. Wait... there should be nineteen.
She sat up, her heart skipping a beat. Two were missing.
And suddenly, everything made sense.
Professor Razia.
She had taken them.
She sighed, feeling a strange mix of emotions. It must have been so hard for Mama to let them go.
Her mother had never treated those paintings as just art—they were like her children. She had spent years pouring love, time, and patience into them. She never let them out of her sight.
That's why they had dedicated that one wall in the living room just for her work. A wall that felt alive. A wall that breathed stories.
"Ever-living paintings," they called it.
So how could Mama part with even two?
She looked at the empty spaces and felt a lump in her throat. What kind of love gives away what it treasures most?
She could still remember it—as if it happened just yesterday.
Five years ago, the world had finally noticed what they had always known.
Mama's paintings were magic.
It had all started with a small exhibition in the city. Someone had uploaded a video of the gallery on social media, and within days, Mama's art went viral. People from all over the world admired her unique strokes, her use of color, the raw emotion behind every brush.
Then came the interview.
A well-known international magazine had featured Mama. Cameras, lights, questions—and through it all, she remained her quiet, humble self.
They called her "The Soul Painter of the East."
And then, the offer came. An invitation to display her work in a prestigious art gallery in New York—an artist's dream.
But Mama had gently smiled and declined.
"I paint for myself," she had said in the interview. "And for the people I love. I can't hang my heart in a place where I can't see it."
The world praised her even more for that.
So now, sitting on the sofa, staring at the wall missing two of those very paintings...She couldn't help but whisper aloud:
"Then why now, Mama? Why give them away now?"
Something didn't sit right.
Mama had always treated those paintings like living beings, like they breathed with her. She never let anyone touch them, let alone take them away.
So what changed?
Why did she say yes to Professor Razia?
What had convinced her to let go?
Her chest tightened. Was it love? Was it guilt? Or something deeper—something she didn't yet know?
The empty spaces on the wall didn't just look blank.They felt like silent questions, waiting to be answered.
She stood up slowly, her thoughts still tangled around the missing paintings.
Without a word, she walked toward the stairs, each step feeling heavier than the last. She needed to be alone. She needed her room.
Her hand brushed the stair railing as she climbed, the quiet house echoing only the sound of her footsteps.Art supplies.She remembered she had brought some yesterday.
As soon as she entered her room, her eyes landed on the canvas resting near the window.Her painting.
She walked up to it, hoping it would bring her comfort.
But something had changed.
The colors, the strokes—everything she had once felt proud of—now looked... off.Lifeless.Wrong.
The same painting that had seemed thoughtful and deep yesterday, now felt like a weak attempt—a clumsy imitation of something greater.
She stared at it in silence, a knot tightening in her chest.
This is the problem, she thought bitterly. My paintings always feel small compared to hers.
Her mother's work had soul, emotion, brilliance.And hers?
Hers felt like shadows.
But then a deeper, sharper voice whispered inside her:Is anyone else comparing you to her? Or are you just doing it to yourself?Are you your own biggest critic? Or your own worst enemy?
She sat on the edge of her bed, hands trembling slightly.
"I just want... when I show my paintings to the world," she whispered to herself, "I want people to say, 'Yes, this is Fiza Hisham's daughter. Just like her mother—brilliant. Remarkable.'"
But not just that.
She didn't want to live in Mama's shadow. She wanted to shine on her own.
Her mother had earned fame. Yes. She was respected. Admired.But she never made a career out of it.
I want more, she admitted silently. I want to turn this into my profession. I want to achieve what she never dared to.
And deep down... she knew her mother sensed that too.
Maybe that's why Mama sometimes looked at her with a strange silence in her eyes—like she knew her daughter was chasing something dangerous.
Maybe Mama knew that
somewhere, the line between passion and obsession was starting to blur.
How long will I keep torturing myself like this?
She stood in the middle of her room, fists clenched, chest rising and falling with every shaky breath.
Enough is enough.
"I need to figure this out," she whispered, but her voice was sharp—like glass breaking.
I can't do this anymore.
I can't keep pretending I love painting when I'm starting to hate it—hate it to the core.
Her hands flew to her head, tugging at her hair in frustration. "I've given two whole years of my life to this. Trying. Improving. Failing. Trying again. How much more time should I give? Where is the line? When does it end?!"
She stared at the canvas like it had betrayed her.
I don't want to paint anymore.
And this wasn't the first time it had happened.
Six months ago…
She still remembered that night. Final exams were suffocating her. Her university was also holding its annual art exhibition. She was expected to deliver brilliance on both ends. But her body couldn't keep up. Her mind had crumbled.
She had come home that day, her face pale, eyes empty.
Without saying a word, she had gathered every single one of her paintings—months of work, all her colors, emotions, dreams.
She took them outside.
And she burned them.
The flames swallowed her art while
Safira and Mama watched in silent shock,
unable to stop her.Their eyes wide. Their mouths frozen.
And now, it's happening again.
She looked around her room, a storm building inside her.
"I hate this," she said through gritted teeth. "I hate myself. I hate what this is doing to me."
Tears welled up, but she blinked them away.
How much pain will I keep giving to the people around me? How much more will I break myself?
She turned away from the canvas.
"I'll do something else. Anything else. But not this."
Her breath trembled. Her hands shook. Her mind screamed.
And in that boiling mix of anger and exhaustion, she felt the most dangerous thing of all—
emptiness.
She was angry, yes. But worse, she was tired.
Tired of proving herself. Tired of failing her own expectations. Tired of being in her mother's shadow.
And maybe… maybe the words she had just screamed inside her head were the answer she had been chasing all along:
"I'm bored of this."
And just like that, the question she'd been asking herself for years finally had an answer.
Not because it was true, but because in her broken state—
it felt easier to believe.
When the mind finds no way out, it starts exploding with inner voices—
Unwanted advice, loud questions, confusing emotions—
A storm inside the head.
In moments like these, one rule always helps:
If you're standing—sit. If you're sitting—lie down.
So Hannah did just that.
She sat down slowly on the edge of her bed, letting her shoulders drop. Her hands rested on her lap as she closed her eyes and took a deep, steady breath.
Then another.
And another.
She tried to calm herself—not with answers, but with silence.
The room was quiet, but her mind had been too loud.
Now, little by little, it began to settle.
And in that stillness—after all the anger, the tears, the confusion—something changed.
A soft voice inside her whispered.
Not in panic. Not in fear.
But with quiet strength.
She knew.
After all that overthinking, after all that pain—
she finally knew what to do.
Where to go.
What step to take next.
She didn't need to shout it out loud.
She didn't need anyone to tell her she was right.
For now, she just sat there—eyes closed, hands calm, heart steady.
And let the peace settle in.
"I should email her," Hannah whispered to herself.
Her voice was barely louder than a thought, but it carried weight—certainty.
Without wasting another second, she reached for her laptop, pulled it onto her lap, and opened it. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as the screen lit up.
She opened her inbox.
Her heart thumped softly in her chest, but she didn't stop.
Click.Compose.
A new message window popped up. The blank space stared at her like a canvas.
But this time, she didn't freeze.
She began typing...
**********************************************************************************************
"Where are we even going?"
The question came out of the darkness, weak but desperate.
A boy, no older than nineteen, struggled to lift his head. His wrists were bound tightly with a coarse rope, chafing his skin raw. His body, half-covered in a tattered jersey and a pair of shorts, shivered in the damp cold of the ship's lower deck. His knees were pulled to his chest, pressed against the hard metal floor that reeked of sweat, rust, and hopelessness.
Across from him sat an older man—though aged in years, his frame was still solid, the kind of strength that comes from surviving too much for too long. But that strength meant nothing here.
They had shaved his head too.
In fact, all of them—more than seventy people crammed in this suffocating steel belly of the ship—had been stripped of their hair, their names, their freedom.
Their identities reduced to numbers, their voices silenced by fear.
No light reached this far down.
Only the distant hum of the engine, the occasional creak of the ship, and the sound of chains dragging whenever someone shifted.
The old man didn't respond right away.
He looked up slowly, his eyes tired, hollow, yet still somehow protective as he stared at the boy.
Finally, he said in a low voice, "Wherever it is... it won't be home."