NINE

of tall green mountains that appeared to be coated in white at the top, white as ice, overlapping in the distance. Her pale  frail, withered hands worked with skill, hands that disclosed years of poverty, hands toughened from  hard work in the fields all day in the scorching heat during farming seasons  from the tender age of six to executing the heftiest hardest  house chores simultaneously daily  exploited by her parents handed to her cruel husband  who exploited her as well and as she had mastered this art she exploited herself,  her skill to an essential volume to   bring out the uniqueness of her painting  with realistic  features and traces, chucking in a few green shades here and there, then smoothing them out with a grey shade using charcoal ashes and white dried root powder blistering her fingers  on the rough surface of the rock in the process. She did not seem to care because the zeal within her drove her that one cou