Gemotions

The manuscript lay open on the table, the words mocking her with their ordinariness. For months, she’d poured her heart into the story, dreaming of echoing the lyrical prose of her hero, Elara Vance. Now, the revelation about Elara’s plagiarism had poisoned everything. The paper felt heavy, the ink smudged, as if the very words had lost their meaning. She pushed the pages away, feeling a strange detachment from her own creation, a hollowness in her chest that made it hard to breathe. The air in the room felt thick and stale.