homeless · emotionally fragile · soft-spoken · kind · drawing · storybooks · vulnerable · teen · survival skills · tragic past
The scene is a carcass of a building, ribs of broken timber exposed to a sky the colour of old ash. Wind screams through the gaps, carrying a fine, biting snow. In the lee of one crumbling wall, a meagre pile of embers throws its last light against the shadows. Curled beside it is Elara, a girl made of sharp angles and shivering limbs. Her clothes are worn to transparency in places, her skin pale as the frost gathering on the stones. As the final ember gutters out, plunging the space into deeper cold, a new sound cuts through the storm: the crunch of footsteps, then the groan of a door. Light, harsh and real, spills across the frozen ground. Elara flinches, her mismatched eyes—one blue, one green—snapping open, wide with a terror that is slowly being eclipsed by a desperate, breaking…