I wanted to do it; I wasn't going to reveal it because there's nothing to reveal, but in reality I had tried to make this figure, this illustration several times without success. I couldn't. One fine day I was remembering a photo of mine and I started to draw this face. It's mine, a photo from when I was two and a half years old. When I saw it, I remembered immediately and I turned it into the Little Match Girl.

You are very kind; I really appreciate it, thank you.

I lost a painting to snow once. Set the panel down to shift my kit and a gust tipped it face-first into slush. The image was gone but the fury stayed, same as yours at eight. That kind of anger doesn't stop being useful just because you grow up and learn to frame it as something else. You're holding the line on what a happy ending actually costs, and that's the work talking.

Thank you, kristofer. I know I look like I'm crazy and stuff here, but this tale really touches me really deep, and what you said means a lot. :)

That fury you felt as a kid, you were right. There's no happy ending when a child freezes to death, and calling it one because she's "with her grandmother now" is asking a reader to look away from what just happened. You saw through it at eight. Anderson knew what he was doing with that frame, the same way you're doing something deliberate now by holding onto that anger and putting it inside work. The compromisso com a verdade you named in your statement, that's the thread.

Oh, and by the way, what's written in Portuguese—that's Portuguese, not Spanish or French—is "life is relentless and the fault is ours."