Chapter 1: The Shape of a Morning
The light came in slow that morning, like it was in love with the woman who lay wrapped in a cream-colored blanket, her cheek pressed softly to the pillow. Anya stood in the doorway, still in her cotton robe, one hand curled around a chipped tea mug. The steam rose lazily. It smelled of osmanthus and honey. But all she really breathed in… was her.
Oriana.
Five years, and she still made the room feel like it had been made just for two.
Anya didn't say anything. She never did, not when Oriana looked like that—eyes closed, hair half-tangled across her face, one hand twitching beneath the sheets like she was drawing in her dreams. These were the sacred hours. The kind that didn't ask for conversation. Only presence.
She walked softly to the window, nudging it open. The morning air drifted in, carrying the scent of wet leaves and roasted rice from the shop down the street. Somewhere, a bird was singing a melody too pretty to be learned. And Anya, with her heart open like a page, let the world begin again.
Behind her, Oriana stirred.
A soft sound, like the breath between thoughts.
"You're watching me again," Oriana mumbled sleepily.
Anya turned, smiling into her tea. "Guilty."
"Don't you get tired of it?"
"No. You sleep like a cathedral."
Oriana cracked one eye open. "A cathedral?"
"Something I'd kneel in without question."
That made Oriana laugh—the kind of laugh that didn't belong to the polite world. It belonged here, between pillows and steam and slow mornings.
"Poetry before breakfast," Oriana said, voice hoarse. "You're getting bolder."
"I'm getting older," Anya replied, crossing the room to sit on the edge of the bed. "And when you get older, you learn to say things before the morning steals them."
Oriana reached out and curled her fingers around Anya's wrist. "Then say it again."
Anya leaned down, pressing her lips to Oriana's forehead. "You're still the first thing I believe in every morning."
The blanket rustled. Oriana sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, her shirt slipping off one shoulder like it didn't know how to behave. Anya watched the sunlight catch the edges of her collarbone, how her eyelashes blinked slow, as if even her eyes had learned to savor.
"I had a dream," Oriana said, looking down at her hands. "We were at the edge of a lake. And you told me you'd teach me how to swim, but I kept sinking. And then you pulled me up and said, 'You don't have to know how to swim. You just have to trust the person who does.'"
Anya touched her cheek. "Sounds like me."
"I think it was the lake near your grandmother's village. The one with the broken dock."
"The one we said we'd go back to someday?"
Oriana nodded. "We never did."
Anya thought for a moment. "Then maybe it's time."
A pause passed between them.
Oriana smiled slowly, like something blooming without shame. "Maybe it is."
Later that morning, the kitchen smelled like mango slices and steamed sticky rice. Oriana sat at the little round table by the window, her sketchbook open. But she wasn't drawing. Just watching Anya move—barefoot, hair pinned up messily, humming an old song from her childhood.
It wasn't about the food. It never had been.
It was the way Anya moved in her home. Not like she owned it—but like she belonged to it. Like every cabinet remembered the shape of her hands. Like the table waited all night just to hear her laughter again.
"Did I tell you," Oriana said, "that the gallery in Chiang Mai wants a second showing?"
Anya turned from the stove, eyebrows raised. "You didn't."
"They said my new work feels more… alive. Like something softened."
"You have softened," Anya said, plating the food. "You used to draw like you were at war with the page."
"I was."
"And now?"
Oriana smiled. "Now I draw because I want to remember how your hands looked holding this bowl."
Anya flushed and nearly dropped it. "You're awful."
"You love me."
"I do."
Oriana set her pencil down and stood. She came to Anya slowly, barefoot like her, and wrapped her arms around her from behind.
They stood like that, in the warm hush of the kitchen, letting the world pass without rushing. Letting love press into their backs like a memory that never faded.
That afternoon, they visited the market together. Anya carried the canvas tote. Oriana carried the dried flowers she'd found by accident, already planning how they'd press them in the pages of a new sketchbook. The vendors smiled at them like they were part of the town's rhythm, which they were.
"You're the ones with the café that always plays the old records," one of them said.
"And the lemon mooncakes," added another.
"And the laugh," an old woman pointed to Oriana. "Yours, child. I'd know that laugh anywhere."
Oriana bowed her head, flustered. "That's her fault," she said, pointing to Anya. "She makes the world too soft."
Anya bumped her shoulder. "You're the one who turned my chest into a home."
And the old woman, watching them walk away with tea and bundles of wild sage, said softly under her breath, "That's what love is, then."
They returned home in the golden spill of late afternoon. Anya went to prepare the tea, and Oriana sat beneath the almond tree in the courtyard, her sketchbook on her knees. She didn't draw faces or flowers today. She drew a hand in motion. Then the curve of a back bent over a counter. Then the line of a smile half-hidden by steam.
She wasn't trying to capture Anya.
She was trying to remember how love felt inside her hands.
When Anya joined her, carrying two cups, she glanced at the page. "That me?"
"No," Oriana said, grinning. "That's how I breathe."
Anya blinked. "You're impossible."
"And you stayed anyway."
They drank their tea in silence.
Birds darted past overhead. A child's laughter echoed from a neighbor's balcony. The wind carried the faintest hint of monsoon. And through it all, Anya leaned into Oriana's side, resting her head on her shoulder.
"Do you ever think about who we were," Anya murmured, "back then?"
"All the time."
"Do you miss her?"
Oriana considered. "I miss how scared she was."
Anya lifted her head. "Why?"
"Because it makes who I am now feel even more real."
Anya's throat tightened. "I love you so much it makes my bones ache sometimes."
"Good," Oriana said. "Then we're even."
They sat together until the light faded. Until the sketchbook closed. Until the tea cooled.
And even then, they didn't leave.
Because some days aren't meant to end with doors or clocks.
Some days end in silence and shared breath.
And the shape of a morning, remembered in the arms of the one who makes it worth waking.