THE UNSEEN FLAME

Chapter Eight

Later during her twenty-sixth year,Tania had lost both her granny and her mother.Her granny's funeral was attended by a handful of people,few of which were her cousins and family friends.Tania's father,son to her granny, didn't attend his mother's burial.What a shame!.Tania couldn't stand the attention mourners sent her way.It brought her a lot of discomfort and the moment the funeral ended,she left immediately, running away from people's stares and gazes.She never really cared about anyone like she did with her granny.Tania stood on a national stage, reading,Embers Unbound to a sea of faces.The lights blazed,her voice steady,each word a spark from the ember, she'd nursed since childhood. She'd sold millions,won awards,but the weight wasn't in the numbers.It was in the letters from the readers,like one from a girl named,Maya."You saved me." Tania wrote back, her pen trembling and mentored her passing the fire.

Tania bought a small house, its walls bare but hers,and hung her art beside the rejections.Greene faded,her gloss outshone,the family drifted, their glow irrelevant.Tania walked the city at night, it's pulse her own,and knew she'd never needed their light.Rejection had forged her,and she burned bright,seen,at last,by herself.Memories of her granny flooded her mind making her miss her granny even more."What really happens after death?Is it peaceful like they say?,"she thought to herself as she sat on a cold rock a few meters away from the main road.Fun fact,Tania didn't have any friends,she didn't feel like she could tolerate anyone at this point in her life.

Tania stood at the peak of her ascent,a figure carved from the ash of rejection.Her small house in the city,a narrow brick building with Ivy climbing its cracked facade-became her sanctuary, it's walls lined with paintings and the faded rejections she refused to discard.Now that her granny had died,she was very convinced that she was going to travel less.The air inside her house smelled of turpentine and old books,a blend that grounded her as she wrote her fourth novel,Ash and Echoes.

The city's pulse,-horns bleating,subway trains rattling,-seeped through her windows,a rhythm she'd synced her life to.Her voice once a whisper drowned by jeers,now filled auditoriums,her reading drawing crowds that hung on her jagged prose.She had become a name,not a whisper. Embers Unbound had sold over a million copies,its raw edges resonating with readers who saw their own scars in her words.Royalties piled up, enough to replace her thrift-store wardrobe with a leather jacket and boots that clicked with purpose.She mentored Maya, a teenage fan who had written to her,meeting her in a cluttered coffee shop where the espresso machine hissed like a dragon.Maya's eyes ,-wide,gray like Tania's -mirrored her hunger and Tania guided her scribbled drafts into something fierce,seeing herself in the girl's quiet defiance.Maya is the only person that had won Tania's attention in a long time.Tania started feeling connected to Maya,her heart really softened when it came to Maya and she wanted to help this girl out of her trauma.She knew that Maya was still hurting even though she looked like a strong girl.She was going to help this girl no matter what.