Gemotions

He crumpled the paper in his fist. “Learn to paint.” *Paint?* His father, the stern general, had never shown an artistic inclination beyond diagramming battle plans.

He paced his father's study, his boots thudding on the floor. Everything felt like a deception. All the rules, the discipline, the rigid structure. And all this time, a secret longing.

A bitter laugh escaped him. The man he thought he knew, the one he had tried to emulate, was nothing more than a carefully crafted myth. He felt a deep, profound resentment for a man he now realized he'd never truly known.