The black swan glided silently across the lake, its reflection rippling on the dark surface of the water. It moved with caution, accustomed to shadows, to the averted gaze of others. It swam alone, following the sway of the wind, certain that its place was there, in the corners where light barely reached. It neither sought company nor expected it. But one afternoon, among the sunlit reeds, it saw the white swan for the first time.

Its feathers gleamed like sea foam, and it moved with ease, leaving no trace of doubt behind. It seemed untroubled by its own reflection or the space it took up on the water. The black swan watched, at first with indifference, then with a stirring sense of unease. The white swan didn’t look away. They held each other’s gaze, without fully understanding, like two beings from different worlds who, nonetheless, shared the same lake.

Intrigued, the black swan drew closer. Its words were few, its movements careful, but the white swan didn’t retreat. They tried to communicate—unsuccessfully at first. Their voices seemed to crash against an invisible wall, their gestures misaligned, as if speaking foreign tongues. But in time, without either knowing exactly how, they began to find a rhythm, a balance.

Each flutter, each pause in the water, wove a bridge between them. The black one learned to swim with less fear; the white one, to linger in the stillness of shadow. And one day, as they looked at their reflection in the water, they could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. On the lake’s surface, a new shimmer appeared: a silver swan, born of light and shadow, celebrating the imperfect and the beautiful within the same being.

by Rita Bissone, 15, Buenos Aires, Argentina.