The rain stopped after few days.
The air smelled clean, heavy with wet soil and new grass.
Aria stepped outside, the ground soft beneath her shoes.
The river was calmer now, quiet but wide, the surface smooth enough to catch the sky.
She carried a small box Lucia had found — old brushes, stiff and uneven.
The children had discovered them in the attic, hidden behind hymn books. Lucia had cleaned them.
She tried using them behind the church. The old wooden bench became her table.
The colors were faded, the water jar small, but she didn't care. She didn't know what to paint either.
So she started with the river.
It came out gray, then blue, then something in between. The brush slipped a few times. Her hands weren't used to it anymore, but it felt right — the slow drag, the soft blur where color met water.
She didn't think about how it looked. She just let it happen.
Lucia came by with a basket of laundry.
"Making a mess again?"
Aria glanced up. "..."
Lucia leaned over the painting. "It's better than I expected."
Aria's lips twitched. "does it really"
Lucia pointed at a lighter patch of color. "What's that supposed to be?"
"I don't know yet."
Lucia smiled. "Then leave it that way"
Aria paused. "…You say that like it's good."
"It is."
Lucia set the basket down and sat beside her. "You're breathing different now."
"Different?"
"You're quieter in a good way."
Aria tilted her head. "Didn't know quiet had kinds."
Lucia smiled."
That evening, Aria painted again. The room smelled faintly of turpentine and candle wax.
The light through the small window turned everything gold for a moment before fading.
She mixed color slowly. The brush trembled a little, leaving uneven strokes across the paper.
Her hands were stained when she stopped, but she didn't wash them right away.
She looked at what she'd made — a blur of color that looked like water and maybe sky. There was no figure, no detail, but something about it felt alive.
It wasn't beauty. It was movement.
She sat there a long time, staring, the sound of the river seeping through the walls.
Lucia came to check on her before bed.
"You should sleep. Paint won't run away."
Aria smiled faintly.
Lucia leaned against the doorframe.
"You know, when you paint, you look like you're talking to someone."
Aria looked at her stained fingers. "Maybe I am"
She turned to leave, Aria didn't look up.
The door closed quietly.
Aria stayed a little longer. The candle burned low.
She added one last line — faint, curving, almost like a smile.
The brush rested on the jar's edge, dripping color into the water.
***
Days passed, and her paintings multiplied.
Nothing large. Just papers left to dry by the window, color still damp along the edges.
Lucia never asked what they were.
Sometimes she stopped to look, said nothing, then went back to her chores.
Aria didn't mind. She wasn't painting for anyone anyway.
The river stayed near, its sound slipping through the open door.
It helped her think. Or remember. She wasn't sure.
The colors came softer these days. Less gray. More blue, more light.
Still cold, but not empty.
She painted water often.
Not the river itself, but how it felt — the weight of it, the quiet movement.
Once, Lucia said, "You're always painting the same thing."
"It's not the same."
"Looks like it."
"It changes every time."
"If you say so."
Then she left, humming a hymn to herself.
Aria didn't expect her to understand. She didn't need her to.
Lucia cared about whether she slept, whether she ate, whether she was warm. That was enough.
When Aria painted, she often remembered the mansion.
The smell of cold stone, the way light fell on the marble floor.
The stillness of the halls.
And Sophia.
She remembered how her mistress would sit by the window, watching as the hired painters worked.
How her eyes would follow the strokes on the canvas — wide, curious, full of something Aria didn't yet understand.
She used to think it was just admiration. But now, years later, she realized it was something else.
Sophia wasn't looking at the painting. She was reaching for it — for the world inside it.
Aria could still hear her voice.
"It's strange, isn't it? How a picture can make you feel something about a place you've never been."
Back then, Aria didn't know what to say.
She'd only nodded, thinking paintings were just objects — colors and lines that belonged to others.
But now, sitting by the river, she understood.
That was why Sophia looked at those paintings like she did.
Because they were doors.
And Aria, without meaning to, was trying to find the same one.
Sometimes she wondered what Sophia would have said if she saw these new ones.
Not the detailed portraits from before, but these — strange, uneven, full of motion and feeling she couldn't name.
Would Sophia recognize them?
Would she still smile the same way?
Maybe she'd say something like,
"It looks cold, but somehow it's warm."
That sounded like her.
Lucia found her one afternoon, sitting on the grass with half-dried paper in her lap.
Lucia sat beside her, placing a folded cloth over her knees.
"How's the river today?"
"The same."
"It always is."
"..."
Lucia glanced at the painting.
Silence followed. Only the sound of the river and birds overhead.
After a while, Lucia spoke again.
"You look calm lately."
"I don't know if that's good."
"It is, people don't heal by standing still"
Aria said nothing. Her eyes stayed on the river, but her fingers brushed against the paper — smudging a bit of blue where the water met the edge.
Lucia watched her do it,
"Does it help?"
"…Yeah."
That night, the candle burned low beside her window.
The painting from earlier leaned against the wall.
The color had dried unevenly — parts of it lighter, as if the river had faded into the sky.
Aria looked at it for a long time.
She didn't think it was beautiful.
But it felt alive.
She touched the edge with her fingers. The surface was rough. Imperfect.
It reminded her of something Sophia once said:
"Sometimes I think paintings aren't finished because the world keeps moving."
Aria sobs.
Outside, the river murmured beneath the night.
It carried petals, leaves, bits of light from the moon.
And in her small room above it,
Aria painted again — not the world she saw,
but the one Sophia once longed for.