Gemotions

The patent attorney’s office felt stuffy, the air thick with the scent of old paper and ambition. Amelia fidgeted, running a hand through her already disheveled hair. She’d come prepared for a fight, a battle over her revolutionary self-folding laundry basket. When the attorney announced, with a slight cough, that a similar mechanism had already been patented six months prior, she sagged into the chair. A long, slow exhale escaped her. She considered the months of sleepless nights, the scrapped prototypes, the dwindling savings account. It was over. A smile, tiny at first, stretched across her face.