Dana lived a good life. She had both her parents, friends at school, a crush who always replied to her texts... nothing to complain about. Until her last year of high school. Her mom was transferred to Japan - a great job opportunity, she said, it'll be a step up not down, don't you like their cartoons? Dana ran to her room and cried. She cried even more when her parents argued that night. Her dad had a job that paid less, and would be forced to move, too. But he also had his life - work friends, bowling friends, relatives. By the next week he had moved out to his mom's. Dana didn't know who she hated more - her dad for running away and not taking her, or her mom for scaring her dad away and making her leave everything she's grown to know and love.
She spent the first months in the foreign country in the basement, talking only to the pidgeons she fed religiously. Her mom worked all day , doing extra hours on the weekends, perhaps to not let her daughter see how sad she was with the change.
At the end of a year, she finished high school online, and was hoping to apply to US colleges only. That would end the nightmare of a year she had. That's when she saw her mom on the basement, feeding the pidgeons. It's been a long while since she had seen her mom looking so carefree, so peaceful. She was also thinner, her eyes sunken, her skin pale. She realized then all the work and effort her mom was putting into it, only for her to not give any chance. Silently, she sat beside her, and both fed the pidgeons.