Gemotions

The campus cafeteria buzzed with lunchtime chatter, but Amelia found no solace in the noise. She picked at a salad, the flavors muted, the textures uninteresting. She knew she should be grateful, but the truth gnawed at her. She had been given something that wasn't hers to keep. A scholarship, intended for a brilliant young woman, a refugee, whose dreams were far more precarious than her own. Her studies now felt pointless, her future a hollow echo of what it could have been. The fork felt heavy in her hand. The air around her seemed thick and suffocating.