"¿Dónde están tus padres?" Parvana asked slowly, practicing.
Her journey began not with a map, but with a name scratched on a piece of cardboard: Marbella . Someone had said her mother might be there. Someone else had said the border was closed. Parvana, now fourteen, had stopped believing in "someone else" long ago.
Luz fell asleep with the one-eared rabbit. Her mother touched Parvana’s hand. Outside, the real stars—not the PDF’s—flickered over a broken world.