(Lizzy's POV)
Spring had fully arrived. The trees around campus had begun to blush with green, the air carried the faint sweetness of new blossoms, and the world felt like it was humming alive and tender.
Lizzy found herself painting again. It started one lazy Sunday afternoon when Funmi dragged her to the campus art fair. The quad was lined with stalls sketches, photographs, handmade jewelry. The colors, the music, the laughter it all felt too alive to ignore.
Funmi nudged her. "You used to love this stuff," she said, handing her a small canvas from one of the booths.
"I don't paint anymore," Lizzy said automatically.
"Then start again," Funmi replied. "No one's stopping you."
It was such a simple sentence, but it lingered. That night, Lizzy found her old brushes buried beneath stacks of notebooks. The bristles were stiff, the paints nearly dry, but when she touched the first stroke of color to the paper, something inside her clicked.
It wasn't perfect. The lines were uneven, the shades too dark, but the act of creating of feeling through art felt like remembering how to breathe.
The next day, she showed Ben her half-finished painting a sky breaking open after rain.
He smiled when he saw it. "That's beautiful," he said softly. "It looks like hope."
Lizzy tilted her head. "I think it's supposed to."
Ben grinned. "You should put it in the student art gallery next month."
She laughed. "You're funny."
"I'm serious," he said. "You've got something there."
The way he said it like he believed it made her blush. No one had ever looked at her art that way before.
Over the next few weeks, Lizzy found herself laughing more often. She joined Funmi and a few classmates for study sessions that ended in inside jokes and shared snacks. She started spending her evenings sketching outside, letting the wind and noise of life flow around her.
Healing, she realized, wasn't always a straight path. Some days she still woke up heavy, her mind clouded with old echoes. But other days like these she felt light again. Alive.
One evening, Ben walked her back to her dorm. The streetlights flickered softly, their shadows stretching along the path.
"You seem different lately," he said.
Lizzy looked up at him. "Is that a good thing?"
"It's a beautiful thing," he replied.
They stopped under the light near her building. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The quiet between them wasn't full of pain anymore it was full of possibility.
"Ben," she said softly, "thank you for being patient with me."
He smiled, eyes warm. "You make patience worth it."
For a long time after he left, she stood there under the light, watching the night sky stretch open above her.
Maybe healing wasn't a single moment of triumph. Maybe it was a thousand quiet beginnings the courage to start again, again, and again.