"You aren't real, are you?" he asked one night, his brush trembling. "You are a page from the books my grandmother used to read."

"Does it matter?" she replied, her hand grazing the canvas. "In a world of grey shadows, isn't a white flower worth believing in?"

Elman returned to the village with his masterpiece. People traveled from miles away to see it. They saw a woman, yes, but they also saw hope, purity, and the magic that adults usually forget.

He never saw her again in the flesh, but whenever he closed his eyes to start a new work, he would whisper to the empty room, "Sən mənim nağıllarımın ağ çiçəyi oldun" — You became the white flower of my fairy tales. And in that memory, his art stayed forever young.

She smiled, a soft, fleeting thing. "I am the story you haven't finished yet."