## Story 1 ![14-1.png](/uploads/14_1_1b59a36d0b.png) Overnight, a cruel new law penned by the Nobles plunged one family into the lowest echelons of society.
The father lost his job. The mother began to meet cold stares while doing the shopping.
And the daughter was expelled from school.

Ever since that day, the pent-up despair of her parents has become a daily expression of rage.
The girl is too young to intervene, and can but stand by as her parents hurl contempt and insults in
equal measure. But in her secret heart, she knows exactly what to say:

I just want you to get along again. You used to laugh. To sing. To be happy.
But now you don't, and there is nothing I can do about it.

Realizing this is a thing beyond her ability to repair, the girl is thrust into a spiral of endless darkness.
But she pushes the feeling back and abruptly springs up from her chair.
She has just come up with an idea. An idea that will make her parents love again.
Her heart leaping with joy, she dashes from the room and out the door. ## Story 2 ![14-2.png](/uploads/14_2_65b8516d05.png) Father. Mother. Daughter.

It is a perfectly normal family; one found anywhere and everywhere. But an unfair law forces
this family to be the subject of poverty and discrimination.
The parents curse their own misfortune and permit their resentments to run wild.

But the wounded girl has come up with a plan to bring them together once more. In her room,
she unfurls a dirty scrap of paper and takes up her pencil. Her eyes narrow in
concentration as the lead skitters across the page.

Soon the image begins to take shape. Though crude, it is clearly a picture of her mother and
father holding hands. The daughter carefully puts the finishing touches on the picture, pouring her
entire heart and soul into its creation. All the while, she thinks back on her precious memories of
a household filled with happiness.
She completes the drawing by giving the subjects a pair of gentle smiles.

She wants them to be like the picture, to get along again. This is her most fervent wish. ## Story 3 ![14-3.png](/uploads/14_3_27494fd4be.png) The girl has drawn her parents in happier days with a crude and unpracticed hand.
She feels confident they will stop fighting once she shows them her creation.
She knows it will make them remember better times.

Her mother sits silently at the table. With hope in her heart, she shuffles up and places the picture in
front of her. But the wife is still not recovered from the latest argument with her husband,
and she shoves the drawing aside without a glance.

"Go away," she mutters. "I don't feel like playing right now."

Her weary eyes never leave the surface of the table. The girl stands rooted in place,
unsure of what to do next. Eventually, she comes to a realization: She is sad. Unbearably sad.
And this sadness is threatening to consume her.

This feeling—this pain—is so overwhelming that she cannot even begin to express it.
The next thing she knows, she is running from the house with tears streaming down her face.

Behind her, she hears her father begin to yell. Maybe he yells at her.
Or maybe her parents are fighting again.
But she continues to run, and the raging voice eventually fades to nothing. ## Story 4 ![14-4.png](/uploads/14_4_eff03f1b45.png) Ignored by her mother, the girl fled her house carrying a heart heavy with despair.
Having regained some modicum of control, she now sits silently and still in the cool night air.
Not wanting her parents to worry, she finally forces
her feet to begin the long trek home—a journey made all the harder by the anchor of her weary soul.

"I wonder if they're still fighting."

The girl approaches a window and peers inside to find her parents sitting across
the table from one another. Her mother is speaking.
Their life has been one of constant discrimination and poverty ever since the law was unveiled.
Their formerly strained livelihoods became even more difficult;
the girl can tell from her mother's face that she has reached her limit.

But this time, her father does not berate his wife. Instead, he simply sits and listens to her words.

"Because...even I..."

As tears begin to flow, her mother abandons her husband at the table and vanishes deeper
into the house. Rather than follow, the man unfolds a dingy piece of paper and stares at it.

It is the girl's picture—the same one her mother rejected earlier that day.
Quietly, her father stands and sets the crude drawing gently on a shelf.

The daughter knows that shelf well. It is the place where he keeps his most precious things.
It holds letters he and his wife exchanged during their courtship.
Pressed flowers given to him by his daughter.
And seashells collected by the family during a rare day of rest at the beach.

The daughter is not alone in her dream. All of them want things to go back to how they were.
Sniffling, the girl rubs her red and tired eyes and opens the door to her house.

"I'm home," she says quietly.
And as her voice echoes throughout the home, it brings with it the faintest glimmer of hope.

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