The pressure to create the next cover was a heavy weight on Thea's shoulders. "Flight & Gravity." The theme was a perfect, poetic summary of her entire life, a constant, exhausting battle between the desire to soar and the force that was always trying to pull her back down to earth.
For days, she sat at her new desk, the bright, clean lamp illuminating a stack of pristine, untouched paper. The perfect sketch, the statement piece that Ms. Sharma had asked for, refused to come.
She drew birds, dozens of them. Hawks in mid-dive, sparrows taking off from a branch, eagles circling high in the sky. But they were just… birds. They were technically proficient, but they lacked the emotional weight, the story, that the theme demanded. They were all flight, and no gravity.
Kofi would find her late at night, staring at a blank page, her pencil lying untouched beside her hand.
"Writer's block?" he asked one evening, leaning against her doorframe.
