Chapter 13 : "Where the Light Fell Softest"
The morning after the storm smelled like beginnings.
Rain still lingered on the leaves, glistening in the sun like forgotten tears. The earth was dark and full of breath. Birds returned one by one, their calls timid at first, as though testing whether the sky had truly calmed.
Oriana was still asleep when Anya slipped out of bed.
She didn't want to disturb the peace that had settled in her chest. It was a quiet kind of joy — the kind that didn't need to be spoken aloud. It lived in her fingertips as she touched the wooden frame of the window, in the way her heart fluttered watching sunlight fall across Oriana's sleeping face.
She moved quietly, padding across the creaky floorboards to the porch.
The morning air kissed her skin with a chill, but she didn't mind. The world felt washed. Cleaned of all its harshness. As if last night's rain had not only soaked the roof and the soil, but something inside her too.
For the first time in a long while, Anya didn't feel afraid of loving.
Behind her, Oriana stirred.
Then came her voice, soft and warm, like honey left in the sun: "You left me."
Anya turned, smiling. "Only for a second."
Oriana stood in the doorway, still wrapped in the blanket from their bed, her hair mussed and eyes sleepy. But even in that unguarded moment, she looked like something out of a dream — all soft edges and golden light.
"You should've woken me," she said, stepping onto the porch and slipping under Anya's arm.
"I wanted you to sleep. You looked peaceful."
Oriana rested her head against Anya's shoulder. "I was dreaming."
"Of what?"
She hesitated. Then whispered, "Of you. But not here. We were older. Somewhere by the sea. And you were wearing white."
Anya laughed. "Was it a wedding?"
Oriana nodded slowly, cheeks pink. "Maybe. But it didn't feel like a ceremony. It felt like… a promise that had already been kept."
Anya touched Oriana's chin and lifted her face until their eyes met. "Then maybe we're just catching up to what the dream already knows."
They kissed, slow and warm, letting the morning gather around them like a prayer.
Later, they wandered the market again, this time buying a paper lantern from an old man who didn't ask questions. Oriana chose one shaped like a star.
"I want to write something on it," she said, turning the lantern in her hands. "Something that'll rise with the flame."
They sat beneath the banyan tree by the edge of the lake, legs tangled, pen passed between them.
Anya wrote first.
"To the one whose laugh fixed the pieces I thought were lost."
Oriana read it and smiled. "You write like you're writing songs."
"Maybe I am."
Oriana hesitated. Then wrote:
"To the girl who held my hand in the dark before I even asked."
They didn't say anything after that. They didn't need to. They lit the lantern together as the sky began to shift — blue slipping into dusk — and watched it rise above the rooftops, above the river, above the quiet ache in both their hearts that whispered, please let this last.
That evening, they lay on the grass behind the guesthouse, watching stars gather like old friends returning.
Anya rested her head on Oriana's stomach, listening to the rhythm of her breathing.
"I used to think love would hurt," she whispered. "That it would ask me to give up pieces of myself. That it would take more than it gave."
Oriana's fingers slid through her hair, slow and soothing. "And now?"
Anya closed her eyes. "Now I think it's like this. Quiet. Patient. Like being held even when you don't say what's wrong."
A long pause.
Then Oriana whispered, "I've never loved anyone like I love you."
Anya tilted her face upward, blinking. "Do you mean that?"
Oriana sat up slightly, pulling Anya into her lap.
"I mean it with everything I have."
She held her like she was afraid to let go — not because she feared Anya would leave, but because sometimes love is too big for one body to hold.
They kissed again, a little more desperate this time. A little more knowing. Like they both understood that this wasn't just about the sweetness anymore. It was about letting each other in, completely.
Inside, the room felt different.
Maybe it was the way the air had thickened with meaning. Maybe it was how the bed was no longer just a place to sleep, but a place where hearts had spoken without words.
Oriana pulled Anya close and whispered, "Let me love you slowly."
And she did.
With reverent hands and quiet laughter. With kisses that started soft and deepened, as if mapping each other's sorrow and joy.
With sighs.
With mouths pressed to skin.
With fingers tracing old fears and rewriting them as promises.
They loved like the storm had taught them something. That even chaos can pass. That even noise can become silence. That even pain can bloom into tenderness.
And when it was over, when they lay tangled in sweat and breath and whispers, Oriana whispered against Anya's throat, "I don't want anyone else to know me this way."
Anya kissed her temple. "Then they won't."
In the quiet after, as the moon arched high and the world outside hushed itself into stillness, Oriana said, "Let's stay here. After the festival ends. Just a little longer."
Anya didn't answer right away.
Then: "I was hoping you'd say that."
They turned toward each other again, the blankets falling away, nothing left between them but the kind of love that didn't need to be loud to be real.
And in the soft hours before dawn, when even the stars seemed to pause in reverence, Anya whispered, "Wherever you are… that's where the light falls softest."
Oriana smiled, even as her eyes drifted shut.
"Then stay in my shadow," she whispered back, "and I'll carry the sun for you."