The first thing people remembered about Clara wasn’t her hair or her laughter — it was the way she held a crayon. Like it wasn’t a stick of color, but a key. A key to something only she could see.
She was seven when her drawings started to come true.
It began with small things — a butterfly she sketched on the back of her notebook appeared fluttering near the classroom window the next morning. The same color. The same broken wing. Her teacher called it coincidence. Her classmates called it luck. But Clara knew better.
Because she had drawn it missing a wing on purpose.
Clara didn’t like to talk much. Her mother said she had the kind of silence that hummed. When other children shouted to be heard, Clara just listened. To the rain. To the creak of the wooden floor. To the quiet breathing of the world.
Their home sat at the edge of a sleepy town, the kind where clouds moved slower and stars seemed closer. Her father, a postman, left before dawn. Her mother ran a small bakery that always smelled of cinnamon and soft music. And Clara—Clara drew.
Every evening, when the sky turned honey-colored, she’d sit by the window with her sketchbook. Her pencils were short and worn, colors smudged with fingerprints. She didn’t draw castles or princesses like the other girls. She drew feelings. Days that hadn’t happened yet.
She once drew her father finding a lost letter in his satchel. The next day, he returned home pale and shaking, saying he’d found a letter that wasn’t meant for anyone he delivered to. It was old, faded, written in a looping hand, addressed simply: “To the one who remembers.”
Her mother laughed it off. But Clara didn’t. Because she had drawn that envelope.
The news spread quietly through the town — about the little girl whose drawings told the future. Some people smiled when they spoke of her. Others crossed themselves. One old man said, “Every miracle begins as a mistake we can’t explain.”
But Clara didn’t think of it as a gift or a curse. It was just what her hands did when her heart wanted to speak.
One night, as thunder rolled through the valley, Clara dreamed of a world made of light — no shadows, no crying, just quiet laughter carried on the wind. When she woke, she ran to her sketchbook and drew it in trembling strokes. Golden rivers. Trees with leaves shaped like hearts. Children running without pain.
By morning, the air outside her window shimmered faintly.
Her mother saw it first — the light spilling through the curtains, soft as dawn but wrong somehow, too alive. When she pulled the drape aside, the garden outside had changed. Every flower stood taller, brighter. Even the old oak tree that had been dying all summer had sprouted new leaves overnight.
Her mother called for her husband. He called for the neighbors. And by noon, everyone was standing in Clara’s yard, staring at what had grown from the ground like a dream waking up.
Someone whispered, “She’s touched by angels.” Another muttered, “Or by something else.”
Clara didn’t care what they said. She just looked down at her sketchbook and smiled. Because the page where she’d drawn that light had turned blank.
As if the drawing had stepped out to live.
Days passed. Clara’s sketches kept changing the world in small ways — a broken clock that started ticking again, a wilted flower that rose. But with each drawing, she felt more tired. Like every miracle took something from her and left a shadow behind.
One morning, her teacher asked the class to draw their dreams. While others filled pages with rockets and rainbows, Clara drew a child sitting under a silver sky, holding a sun between her palms. When the teacher saw it, she felt a strange pull in her chest — a memory she didn’t have. That night, she dreamed she was that child.
Word spread beyond the town now. Strangers began to arrive — journalists, scientists, the curious, the desperate. A woman whose son lay in a hospital bed brought Clara a photograph and begged her to draw him standing again. Clara’s small hands trembled as she lifted the pencil.
When she finished, she drew not just the boy — but a sunrise behind him.
The next day, the woman called, sobbing. Her son had woken.
People stopped calling it coincidence. They called it hope.
But Clara began to notice something strange. The more she drew, the more the world outside lost its color. Flowers faded quicker, skies looked duller, laughter felt thinner. It was as if the brightness she created was being borrowed from somewhere else.
Her mother saw it too. “Clara, maybe it’s time to rest.”
But Clara couldn’t stop. Because each night she’d dream of darker things trying to swallow her painted light — shadows crawling across the edges of her drawings, whispering, You cannot fix everything.
She began locking her sketchbook away, promising herself she’d stop. But one night, she heard crying outside her window. It was a sound too heavy for any grown-up, too deep for any animal. When she looked out, she saw the town’s lampposts flickering one by one, like candles dying.
And beyond them, something vast moving — a darkness that wasn’t just night.
Clara ran to her sketchbook. Her fingers moved before her mind did. She drew light — waves of it, pouring from the sky, flooding every street and heart. She didn’t care what it took.
When dawn came, the entire town woke to see sunlight brighter than any before. But Clara didn’t wake.
Her mother found her asleep on the desk, hand still clutching a pencil. Her pulse was faint but steady. On the open page lay a drawing — not of their town, but of a new one. A place where no one cried. Where no one fell sick.
At the corner of the page, in her shaky handwriting, she had written three words:
“No more pain.”
The doctors said she’d fallen into a deep sleep, one they couldn’t explain. Her body was alive, but her mind — gone somewhere they couldn’t reach. They kept her in a white room at the edge of the hospital, where the curtains were always open and the air smelled of lilies.
People kept visiting. Some came to pray, others to see the miracle child who painted tomorrows. They brought flowers, drawings, letters. And slowly, strange things began happening around her again.
A nurse whispered that whenever someone cried beside her bed, their tears turned into tiny drops of gold. Another swore she saw sketches forming on the walls at night — soft lines glowing before fading by morning.
Months passed. The town changed. The bakery became busier than ever, though Clara’s mother never smiled fully anymore. Her father still walked his postal routes, but sometimes he’d stop at the hospital and talk to her empty chair, reading her the letters she used to imagine.
Then one evening, it rained in a way no one had ever seen before — not down, but sideways, swirling, dancing like it didn’t want to fall. When the storm cleared, the hospital windows were covered with delicate, luminous drawings. Each pane held a different world — children laughing, gardens blooming, skies stretching forever blue.
The head nurse ran to Clara’s room. Her bed was empty.
Only her sketchbook lay there.
On the last page, she had drawn a sunrise. But unlike any before — this one had no shadows at all.
At first, people panicked. Search parties went out. The town turned over every stone, every field, every dream. But after three days, a child in the next village woke and told her mother, “The girl with colors visited me. She said the world won’t hurt anymore.”
No one believed her. Until, the next morning, the sick began to heal without medicine. The old said their bones didn’t ache. Arguments in the marketplace stopped mid-sentence, replaced by quiet understanding.
Something was changing in the world.
And all across the sky, faint as breath, colors began to move — not like sunsets, not like rainbows, but like brushstrokes.
Someone whispered, “She’s still painting.”
Years passed. The town became known as the place where peace began. People called it Tomorrow’s Edge. Scientists came and left confused. Poets stayed and never stopped writing.
And sometimes, when children picked up crayons, strange things would happen again. A drawn bird might flutter its wings. A cloud might take the shape of a smile.
But every miracle came with silence — a whisper of gratitude carried on the wind.
Because somewhere, beyond where eyes could reach, Clara was still painting.
She had drawn a world without pain. And it had begun to believe in itself.
Her mother found the sketchbook again three years later.
It was tucked inside a chest beneath Clara’s old bed, wrapped in a faded bedsheet that still smelled faintly of crayons and soap. The cover had changed — it shimmered softly now, as if sunlight was trapped beneath the paper. When she touched it, warmth pulsed through her fingers.
She sat on the floor, trembling, afraid to open it but unable to resist.
The first few pages were familiar — the early drawings of trees, skies, people smiling. But then the sketches became different. Deeper. They seemed to move even without wind. The lines shimmered faintly, breathing, alive.
On one page, Clara had drawn herself standing before a doorway made of light. Her eyes were closed, and her hand was outstretched. Beyond the door, something glowed — not gold or white, but a color her mother couldn’t name. It was every color at once.
Below it, in small, uneven handwriting, were the words:
“When you let go of pain, don’t forget to remember love.”
Her mother traced the words with her thumb, tears falling silently onto the paper. For years she had prayed for her daughter’s return. But now, she realized—Clara hadn’t gone anywhere. She had simply moved forward.
The years after that were quiet. The town changed slowly, then all at once.
People no longer spoke of the “miracle child” in whispers. They spoke her name as if it were part of a prayer. A school was built in her honor — Clara Haven Elementary — where children were taught that imagination was not just a pastime but a promise. Every classroom had blank walls and boxes of crayons. The teachers said, “Draw something kind every morning.”
And sometimes, the drawings didn’t stay drawings.
One boy drew a paper boat that sailed right off the desk. A girl drew her grandmother and felt arms wrap around her from nowhere. Little miracles, scattered like stars.
But not all of them were gentle.
Once, a boy with sadness behind his smile drew a storm that didn’t stop for three days. Rain fell without thunder, washing color from the town’s rooftops until everything looked gray. The people panicked. They rushed to the statue of Clara in the town square, whispering for her to take the storm back.
On the fourth morning, the rain turned into petals. The sky blushed pink, and the gray faded.
The mayor declared it a “reminder.” A reminder that power, no matter how kind, could still wound.
Clara’s mother aged quietly. She spent her mornings in the bakery, still kneading dough the way she used to when Clara sat beside her, sketching sugar clouds. But some nights, when the stars seemed to pulse brighter, she’d walk to the hill behind their home — the one Clara used to call Tomorrow’s Hill.
There, she would whisper, “If you can hear me, my love… tell me — is it beautiful where you are?”
One night, a voice answered. Soft, distant, like the echo of a dream:
“Yes, Mama. But it’s not finished yet.”
The next morning, the town woke to find new drawings carved into the earth itself — huge swirls of color and light that shimmered only when you looked at them from the corner of your eye.
People called them the Tomorrows.
Then came the day the world changed again.
It began as a hum. Not from machines, not from voices — from the air itself. Every radio, every bird, every wave carried it. The hum was soft but constant, like a heartbeat. Scientists tried to explain it as atmospheric resonance. But people knew better.
Because it made flowers bloom out of season. It made strangers smile at one another on subways. It made wars pause for a moment too long, as if the world was remembering something fragile.
The hum grew louder.
In cities, people looked up to see faint streaks of color drifting through the clouds — not rainbows, not auroras, but brushstrokes of living light. The news said, “Unidentified atmospheric phenomena.” But children just pointed and said, “Clara’s painting again.”
In a small corner of the world, an artist named Mara — who had been Clara’s childhood friend — began to paint the same images without realizing why. She hadn’t picked up a brush in years, not since the day Clara vanished. But one night, she dreamed of her.
In the dream, Clara stood in a field of paper that stretched to the horizon. Every sheet fluttered with unfinished sketches.
Clara said, “You still remember color the way I do. Help me finish it.”
When Mara woke, her fingers were stained with blue pigment.
For weeks, she painted without sleep — skies, rivers, people laughing. But no matter what she painted, a faint shadow always appeared at the edges. A soft, dark mist that blurred joy, dulled the light. She tried to erase it, but it returned stronger.
Until one night, she painted Clara again. Only this time, Clara wasn’t a child. She was older — maybe seventeen, maybe twenty. Her eyes were wide and calm, but filled with something that looked like sorrow.
She said, “Mara, the world can’t live without contrast. You can’t erase pain. You can only teach it to heal.”
Mara dropped the brush.
The painting pulsed.
The next morning, people everywhere began to see both light and shadow dancing in the sky. For the first time, the colors didn’t separate — they embraced.
And from that day on, things grew differently.
Flowers started growing in unexpected places — through cracks in asphalt, on rooftops, along highways. People said they could hear faint laughter in the wind. Hospitals reported fewer patients. The old said their memories were clearer.
But there was something else too — people began dreaming the same dream.
A vast white field. A girl with a sketchbook.
She’d look up and ask softly, “What do you want tomorrow to look like?”
And when the dreamers woke, they’d find a new drawing beside their bed — made by a hand that wasn’t theirs.
Soon, a museum was built in Clara’s honor.
They called it The Gallery of Tomorrows.
It had no doors — only an open archway. Inside, no one hung art on the walls. Instead, the walls themselves shifted, rippling with living sketches. They changed every day depending on who entered. If you walked in with grief, you saw something gentle — a child’s hand, a candle, a bird returning home. If you entered with joy, you saw the horizon stretch wide.
And in the center of the hall stood an easel with a single unfinished canvas.
No one was allowed to touch it. But sometimes, at dawn, new strokes would appear — faint, shimmering, unmistakably from a child’s hand.
Clara’s mother visited once a year. She would sit quietly before that canvas, close her eyes, and say, “I’m proud of you.”
And every year, a new flower bloomed at her feet — one that didn’t exist anywhere else in the world.
Decades later, the story of the girl who painted tomorrows was taught in schools as legend. Some said she was real, others said she was a myth born from collective hope. But no matter who you asked, everyone had heard the hum. Everyone had seen the skies glow once.
And in some quiet places — libraries, churches, forgotten corners — people still left blank pages on windowsills. For Clara.
Because sometimes, by morning, those pages weren’t blank anymore.
But one day — generations after Clara’s time — the colors began to fade again.
A new age had come, one of machines and precision, of perfect cities and perfect skies. There was no war, no sickness. The world was peaceful. But it was also silent. People no longer drew. Children no longer dreamed. The hum had stopped.
Art had been replaced by automation. Hope had been optimized.
And somewhere, far beyond the edge of all that was known, Clara watched quietly from her world of light. Her hair now shimmered with starlight, and her eyes held centuries of wisdom.
She turned to her sketchbook, blank once more.
She whispered, “They forgot what pain feels like. And now, they don’t understand joy either.”
Her pencil hovered above the page.
She hesitated.
To bring pain back would mean to make the world imperfect again. But without imperfection, there could be no love — because love itself is a beautiful kind of ache.
She began to draw.
A single tear.
A trembling hand reaching out to hold another.
A child crying — not from sadness, but from the weight of feeling something real.
When she finished, the page glowed faintly, then burst into countless specks of light that fell toward Earth.
People began dreaming again.
They woke up crying for reasons they couldn’t name. They looked at one another and saw, for the first time in centuries, longing. And with it — compassion.
Music returned. Poetry returned. Love returned.
And once more, faint colors began to paint the morning skies.
Clara closed her sketchbook and finally smiled.
The world, in its imperfection, had learned how to heal itself.
She looked up — at a horizon that never ended — and whispered, “Tomorrow is ready now.”
And with that, she stepped into the light she had painted so long ago.
The world exhaled.
Want to read a bit more? Find some more of my writings here-
Daniel Camargo Barbosa — The Monster of the Andes
The Mighty Jackfruit: Nature’s Meat, Miracle Fruit, and More
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
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