Lucy cradles her six-month-old son against her chest, her thin arms wrapped around him as if he were the only anchor left in her fractured world. Exhaustion clouds her young eyes, and beneath the weariness lies a deeper pain that no seventeen-year-old should carry.

Thousands of kilometres from the only home she once knew in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lucy is raising a child while trying to stitch together the remnants of her own stolen childhood. As the baby stirs, her gaze drifts. The same question returns every day, heavy and unanswered: What will she tell her son when he grows older and asks about his father? She has no answer.

Lucy’s life fractured long before her son was born. As a small child in Goma, North Kivu, violence erupted around her family. They fled their home in terror. In the panic, she was separated from her mother and never saw her again. A woman known to the family took her in, offering shelter in exchange for household chores. Yet when fresh fighting surged, everything scattered once more. Lucy lost contact with her guardian just as she had lost her own relatives.