That night at the Mercers’ house, the rooms finally went quiet.

The living room lamps were off. The last bit of warmth from the birthday gathering had faded into the usual calm of the home. Aunt Vee and Uncle Trunde were asleep upstairs, the kind of sleep that came after a long day of talking, hosting, cleaning, and smiling for everyone else.

Aunt Vee slept, but her body didn’t fully relax. Her hand rested near her chest, fingers curled lightly against her shirt as if she was still holding on to something. She had kept her promise to Thea, and that did ease one part of her mind. Another part stayed alert, like a mother bird watching the nest even when the nest was safe.

Uncle Trunde slept with the deep heaviness of someone who could fall asleep anywhere if the day had been long enough. His breathing was slow. His face looked younger when he was asleep, less like a man who fixed broken stairs and helped neighbours, more like someone who simply belonged in the quiet.

Sorianne, however, could not sleep.

She had tried. She had turned her pillow over twice. She had pulled the blanket up, then pushed it down. Her body felt tired in a real way, but her mind kept moving as if it had caffeine in it. At some point, she gave up and reached for her phone. The screen lit up her room at once, too bright, too sudden. It washed over her face and made her blink hard. Her eyes watered from the sharp light. Her eyes were a clear green that looked brighter in daylight, but in the dark they seemed darker, like glass catching a small amount of moonlight.

She winced and lowered the phone quickly.

3:00 AM.

Sorianne stared at the numbers as if they had personally offended her. She hated this hour. She hated the feeling of being awake when the world was asleep, as if she had missed a secret rule everyone else understood.

She put the phone down on her bed and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Then a strange thought came, quiet but heavy. She hated; the word felt wrong in her head. It didn’t fit her the way other feelings did.

Sorianne sat there for a moment and tried to trace where it came from. She could tolerate things. She could dislike things. She could feel annoyed. She could feel tired and sad and even angry sometimes. But hate… hate was different; it felt sharp and it made her feel like something in her chest was tightening for no clear reason.

At 3 AM on December 9th, 2023, she had just turned sixteen. The day had already crossed into the next one while she lay awake, staring at her ceiling. The date was right. December 7th had been Thursday. Her birthday party had been Friday the 8th. Now it was early Saturday morning, and she was still awake.

Maybe teenagers felt this way. Maybe this was part of growing up. She had seen older students at school act rebellious, edgy, and tired of everything. They spoke like the world was their enemy. Sorianne never understood that. She didn’t want the world to be her enemy.

Yet here she was.

Feeling something sharp that she didn’t know how to name properly.

Her breath came out slowly. She looked down at her hands resting on the blanket. She didn’t hate her aunt and uncle. She didn’t hate Matilda. She didn’t hate the town. She didn’t hate school, even when it was suffocating sometimes.

So what was it?

The answer sat there, waiting, like it didn’t care whether she liked it.

The secret.

The words her aunt had said in the sunroom. Family magic. Magic that let you enter canvases. Sorianne pressed her lips together and felt her face warm, not from embarrassment, but from frustration. Magic did not exist; it was meant to be in movies. In novels. In children’s stories that ended with happy lessons and clear meanings.

Not here. Not in St Ives. Not in her aunt and uncle house and definitely NOT in her own hands.

She hated that she didn’t understand it. That might have been the true root of it. The feeling of being forced into a world she didn’t ask for, without instructions clear enough to make her feel safe.

Or maybe she hated something else underneath. Something she did not want to say out loud, even to herself.

She sat up fully, crossing her legs on the bed. Her light blue nightgown fell softly over her knees. Her hair had come loose from its tie earlier and now rested over her shoulders, a soft pink curtain against the pale fabric.

She turned her head toward the window, the one right beside her bed. It was still her favourite part of her room. At night, the coastline view was mostly shadow and faint light. The sea was a darker mass beyond the glass, with a pale line where the sky met water. The curtains were still, barely moving.

Sorianne stared out as if the night might answer her questions.

It did not.

Still, she kept looking for a little while, because hoping cost nothing in that moment. It was something she could do without anyone seeing.

Eventually, she pushed herself off the bed.

Her feet touched the floor quietly. She padded to the door, opened it slowly, and stepped into the hallway. The house was asleep. The air felt cooler out here. The floorboards knew her steps well enough that they did not creak under her weight.

She moved like a careful shadow, walking past her aunt and uncle’s room. Their door was closed. The faint sound of Aunt Vee’s faint mumbles drifted out under it. Sorianne hesitated there for half a second, then kept going to the sunroom was down the hall. The door was closed, but not locked.

She slipped inside.

The room looked different at night. Because in the daytime, the sunroom felt bright and alive, filled with soft winter light and the clean colours of paint. At night, it became quiet and silver. Moonlight and faint street glow pushed in through the windows, laying pale shapes across the floor. Everything looked softer, less certain.

Her easel stood where she left it. The unfinished painting faced the window like it belonged there.

Sorianne stepped closer.

She did not turn on the overhead light. She didn’t want to wake anyone. She also didn’t want to break the strange mood of the room. The darkness felt honest tonight. It matched what she felt inside.

She stood in front of the canvas and looked at it.

It was still the coastline. Still the calm sea. Still the warm edge of sunset that she had tried to capture. Two days ago, this painting had felt simple in the best way. It was a moment she wanted to hold. A scene she didn’t want to lose.

Now she couldn’t look at it the same way.

The painting felt like an object that had been promoted into something else. It wasn’t only paint and colour anymore. It was connected to a secret that had changed the shape of her life in one conversation.

She leaned forward slightly, studying the brushstrokes.

In the low light, the paint looked smoother, almost glossy in some places. The sky she had blended had a soft depth. The water held tiny hints of movement. The shoreline had gentle shadows.

It was beautiful. She felt proud of it. Then she felt something else, and she didn’t like it.

Unease.

The rules her aunt had explained came back in pieces, like her mind was replaying them without permission.

Only your own paintings.

A doorway point.

The first mark.

Emotion mattered.

The world inside could react to you.

Sorianne’s eyes shifted without her meaning to.

Toward the spot where her aunt had asked her, “Where is the first mark?”

Toward the place that had glowed.

Her breath caught a little. She stared at the canvas and waited for it to glow again, as if it might do it on its own to prove it was still real.

Nothing happened.

Sorianne let out a shaky breath that sounded almost like a quiet laugh. Of course it didn’t. It wasn’t a toy that performed on command. If it was real, it probably had its own rules, the kind that didn’t care about what she wanted at 3 AM. She straightened slowly. Her shoulders felt tight.

Hope, she thought again; but was it really hope?

Or had she just said the first thing that sounded good in front of her aunt, because her aunt was serious and waiting, and Sorianne wanted the conversation to stop feeling like it was crushing her?

Hope had always been her default. Maybe she used it like it would protect her from all the bad things the world could do to her. Maybe she used it to buy time.

The thought made her stomach twist.

She rubbed her arms lightly, as if the room was colder than before. Her nightgown was thin. She should have brought a cardigan. She had been too distracted.

Her mind drifted back to school. The way some students looked at her sometimes, not cruel exactly, but different. Like she was a reminder of something uncomfortable.

The girl with no mother.

The girl who didn’t join in certain conversations because she didn’t know how.

The girl who smiled politely and left early.

The girl who painted quietly and never showed anyone, because once people looked too closely, they might also look too closely at her.

Now, on top of everything else, she was supposed to be… what? That word slipped into her mind again. A quick flashback, almost like a spark.

Painterblood.

Her aunt hadn’t used it much. She had been careful. She had said it like it was a family term that carried weight, not something you threw around lightly.

Sorianne hated how it sounded.

It made her feel like she belonged to something she didn’t understand. It made her feel like she had been marked without asking.

She lowered her head and let out a defeated sigh.

“How am I supposed to handle all of this?,” she whispered it so quietly it barely existed in the room.

She looked toward the window again.

Her own reflection was faint in the glass. Not clear, but enough to see the outline of her face and hair. Her eyes were darker in the reflection, but still green when she moved closer. She looked tired. She looked like a sixteen year old trying to pretend she was older than she felt.

Behind her reflection was the room. The easel. Her paintings leaning against the wall. Some of Aunt Vee’s work too, the older pieces with more experience in the brushwork, the kind of paintings that felt like they had lived longer than a teenager’s attempts. Sorianne stared at that mix of things and felt something settle inside her. This house had art in it like other houses had family photos.

Her mother had been a painter.

Her aunt was a painter.

Sorianne was a painter.

That part made sense. That part had always made sense.

But the rest? Did not.

But she could deal with the rest later. Her aunt would help her. Aunt Vee was strict, but she never abandoned things halfway. If there was anyone Sorianne trusted to guide her through something strange, it was her.

Sorianne rested her fingers lightly on the edge of the easel just enough to ground herself with something physical.

“Okay,” she whispered, like she was speaking to herself, not the canvas. “Open mind.”

She stood there for a moment longer. Then she looked again at the spot where she thought the first mark was.

As weird as all of this, she wanted to understand it herself. If emotion was the key, then she needed to know what she had truly felt.

Sorianne closed her eyes and tried to remember that moment on December 7th. The winter air. The sea. The sunset. The sudden need to capture it before it disappeared.

She thought of her own words at her mother’s grave.

Hope is like that sometimes.

Her chest tightened as the memory returned.

She opened her eyes.

Hope hadn’t been a lie. It may not have been the full truth, but it was part of it. She had wanted to hold beauty before it vanished. She had wanted to prove that something good could still exist, even if her life had been shaped by loss.

That was hope.

Maybe it was also fear; fear of time moving forward without her mother, of forgetting, of being left behind emotionally while everyone else grew up.

Sorianne swallowed and felt her throat tighten.

The hate she had felt earlier didn’t even make more sense now more than ever, but she stayed quiet as she is listening to the house. No sound from her aunt and uncle room. No footsteps. No doors opening; still just her and the room.

Sorianne looked at her painting again and exhaled slowly.

“I’ll focus on you,” she whispered, the way someone might speak to a book they were not ready to finish. “I can do that.”

She didn’t pick up a brush. She didn’t paint in the dark. Instead, she stood there a little longer, letting the canvas be what it was. A painting. A memory. A piece of her.

Her shoulders loosened slightly.

She turned away from the easel and took one last glance at the window, at her own faint reflection, at the sea beyond it.

Still didn’t answer her questions but it didn’t hurt her either.

Sorianne sat on the sunroom sofa with her steps as the night still feels heavy but no longer crushing. She knew sleep might still take a while. But at least now she had something steady to hold as she watches her painting, waiting for the night to slowly make her eye droop from weariness. A thought past her mind;

An open mind. A promise to herself. And the simple decision to keep painting, even when her life started to feel bigger than her hands.