In a world not quite like ours, where the sky shimmered in shades of violet and the trees whispered secrets with every breeze, there lived a girl named Lyra. Her home was a small cottage nestled at the edge of a vast forest, where the sun seemed to hide behind clouds more often than not. Lyra's life had been a series of storms—dark, heavy clouds that she never quite learned to outrun. Her childhood had been one of neglect, her adolescence a tangle of broken promises and unhealed wound.
But despite it all, Lyra had something no one could take away: her smile. It was a fragile thing, like a butterfly's wing, but it was there, always present. It was her armor, the one thing she could control when everything around her felt out of her reach. Beneath it, however, was a heart that had been bruised and battered, yet still held a quiet hope that one day, someone might see the real her.