Gemotions

The thief, as the gallery owner called him, was a student, a young woman with nervous eyes and trembling hands. He had stolen the paintings from his studio and displayed them in a small, out-of-the-way gallery in a different city. He didn’t care now. He only cared about the paintings.

He’d walked in, bracing himself for an argument, for a legal battle. But the room… the room hummed with a quiet energy. And his paintings, which he’d dismissed as failures, looked… alive.

He found himself shaking hands with the gallery owner, a woman whose initial fury had dissolved into something softer, something akin to understanding. He kept replaying her soft smile.

He had a feeling of lightness in his feet and a humming sound inside his head. He looked at the student. She was crying, but her face was alight.