Lina opened the window in her small room and lifted her head to the sky. The cool air hit her face and she squinted. The city was crowded and noisy, even in the early hours. The honking of cars, the footsteps of people hurrying, the shouts of vendors on the street… But Lina's eyes remained fixed on the sky, far from all this chaos.
Since childhood, she had always asked herself the same question: "Where do my dreams go?"
As a child, when her kite slipped from her hands, she would watch for hours as the colorful paper soared into the sky. The same thought always crossed her mind: "Maybe dreams are like that, they slip away from our grasp and vanish into the sky."
Lina had just turned seventeen. She was in the most self-critical period of her life. On one hand, her family's voices urging her to be realistic, on the other, the whispers of dreams rising from within… She was caught between the two.
She opened her notebook. The pages were covered with drawings. No one knew, but for her, drawing was as essential as breathing. She spoke with colors and was silent with lines. Sometimes there were birds fluttering, sometimes staircases filled with stars, and sometimes people reaching their hands toward the sky on the paper. Every line was a piece of the world within her.
But she was afraid to reveal this passion to her family. Her father was a hardworking and disciplined man. Every conversation at home invariably ended with classes, exams, and plans for the future. Her mother, on the other hand, dismissed Lina's dreams as "childhood ambitions." For them, true success lay in becoming a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer. Being a painter was merely a dream.
Sometimes Lina would close her notebook tightly and hide it under her pillow. It was as if, if she kept her dreams hidden, no one would find them, no one would judge them. But her heart would not be so easily silenced.
One day, returning from school, she gazed at the sky between the gray buildings. A thin ray of sunlight filtered through the clouds. Narrowing her eyes, she whispered:
"Perhaps everyone's dreams are hidden in a cloud. Some turn into rain and return, others become stars and light up the night."
At that moment, a strange feeling passed through her. A feeling that her life would be anything but ordinary. She might be just a student now, just a girl secretly drawing in her notebooks… But one day, somehow, her dreams would truly merge with the sky.
Lina had unknowingly opened the first page of her own journey. And that journey would transcend ordinary days.