She had grown like a twisted tree. Not by accident, but by necessity. Each branch was a path she did not choose, each leaf a secret that protected her. 

Her mother looked at her without seeing her. Her father, a distant rumor. She built herself each day, not with words, but with silences. A muscle that stretches, a gaze that diverts, a sigh that draws worlds. 

It was not a lie. It was a persistence. The way trees grow towards the light when all the earth conspires to sink them. She had learned that truth is not what is told, but what is survived. 

In the village, they called her "unusual". But no one understood that she was weaving something more than a life, she was inventing her own freedom. Each gesture was a thread, each memory a strand that pulled her from the narrow margins where they tried to contain her. 

One day she disappeared. She did not leave. She simply transformed. Like those insects that shed their skin, leaving behind only the outline of what they once were.