When Nika Streletskaya and her mother were driven from their home in eastern Ukraine by the Russian Army, there was little she could take with her.
But talent travels. And endures, apparently.
Nearly one year later, the 7-year-old is living alongside other Ukrainian refugees at a converted hotel in the Black City port city of Varna.
Through her paintings, Nika is doing her best to cope with the effects of war.
The results are as dramatic as the upheaval that has forced her and millions of other Ukrainians to flee their homeland since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion in February of last year.
Nika's paintings first came to RFE/RL's attention last fall, during a visit to the Zarya complex that houses Nika and her mother along with dozens of other war refugees.
Paintings by some of the Ukrainian children were hung on strings on a terrace there, against the background of a gray, autumnal sky.
Nika's paintings stood out from the others.
Identified as one of Ukraine's top paintbrush prodigies well before the war, Nika had already been recognized with art prizes from London to Los Angeles, from Versailles to Vienna.
She appeared among the top 25 entries in a book published in Ukraine called the Encyclopedia Of Children's Talents. And she'd been featured in solo exhibitions all around Ukraine, as well as in Japan.
She'd won more than a few honors in Bulgaria, too.
Within days of the launch of the Russian invasion, Nika and her mother had fled the 1,000 kilometers or so to seek safety in Bulgaria.
Her mother, Tetyana Okhrimenko, lists at least 13 countries where Nika's artworks have been featured.
Okhrimenko is an artist herself and teaches drawing.
She had taught more than 250 children at her studio in Dnipro before the war began.
"Nika grew up surrounded by brushes, paints, pencils, and canvases. She grew up around paintings. She was always surrounded by people who were painting," Nika's mother told RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service. "I guess that influenced her desire to become an artist, as well."
Okhrimenko and her daughter were initially accommodated at a hotel in Golden Sands, a major resort town north of Varna on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast.
To their delight, the families of several children Okhrimenko had taught at her studio in Dnipro were placed in the same hotel. And they all started painting again.
Other children at the hotel joined them, providing a balm for the psychological pain that many were feeling and allowing Nika once again to pursue her art.
Following the initial stages of the Bulgarian government's support for Ukrainian refugees, Nika, her mother, and other refugees were relocated from Golden Sands to more modest accommodations in the Zarya converted hotel. They are not provided with food, leaving many reliant on the help of donors and volunteers.
A volunteer for one such group, a domestically run charity called Open Heart Fund, came across some of Nika's paintings at Zarya. Dozens of them were hanging in the common space there, and they made an instant impression.
Eventually, Nika and some of the other children were able to enroll in a drawing course at a Bulgarian-Ukrainian cultural center sponsored by the Open Heart Fund.
Okhrimenko became a volunteer teacher at the center.
Nika's father, a medical worker, remains along with hundreds of thousands of others in their eastern Ukrainian hometown of Dnipro, on the Dnieper River.
The Open Heart Fund is organizing an exhibition of Nika's paintings in February to coincide with the first anniversary of the Russian invasion and the life-altering blow it dealt to tens of millions of Ukrainians, including children like her.
