But not everyone saw the beauty she was building. Some came into her home with softened eyes, touched by the colors, the feathers, the quiet stories told through paint and thread. They said it felt like something breathed there—like memory, or hope.
But his family never saw it.
They muttered about the walls not being white, about the "clutter," about the strange symbols and too much color.
"White walls are clean," they said. "Grey is modern."
She only smiled, biting her tongue. A house like that would feel more like a hospital than a home. Lifeless. Cold. A place where no roots could grow.
So she kept going.
Room by room, she transformed the space. She rearranged furniture a dozen times, looking for flow and warmth. She reused everything she could—old crates became shelves, jars became vases for herbs. Even broken things found purpose. In winter, she closed off the colder rooms and lived mostly in one: the biggest room, with the small iron fireplace.
It was cluttered, yes. But it held life.
A cooking pot hanging over the fire. A low table layered with folded clothes, beads, dried herbs. A mattress tucked by the wall, books stacked like tiny towers. She made it work. Because she had to.
Her husband hardly noticed. He slipped deeper into his glowing screens, into long silences and the familiar scent of smoke. Sometimes he'd cut a bit of grass outside. Sometimes he didn't.
So she did it herself. She took the scythe, day after day, cutting through thick weeds and old thorn patches. It was heavy work, and the sun was strong, but she did it anyway. Not for beauty. For safety.
Because she had seen them—gray snakes, slithering through the tall grass. The ones with horned heads. The ones old stories warned about. She walked barefoot in summer, and the fear of stepping on one coiled in her belly like a knot. So she cleared the land. All of it.
She built her sanctuary one blade at a time.
---
But when the air inside grew too thick with smoke and noise—when his friends came, dragging their heavy laughter and the sour scent of weed—she slipped away. No words, no arguments. Just quiet exits with Ashu at her side.
Her wolf-dog padded ahead, alert and loyal, guiding her through the wild edges of the land. Together they walked—past the last rows of the vineyard, through grass wet with dew, into the embrace of trees. She didn't need music out here. The forest sang its own. Wind stirred the canopy like breath over strings. Birds offered sharp, sudden harmonies. Insects hummed low notes through the undergrowth.
She gathered as she walked—fallen feathers, bits of lichen, dried herbs, stones shaped like crescent moons. She brought them home in her pockets and made offerings to corners of the house. A sprig of mugwort above the door. A pinecone on the windowsill. Wild mint drying beside the fire. The land gave freely, and she answered with care.
The soil was hard, almost hostile—dense clay that cracked in heat and clung in rain—but she worked it slowly. Dug and turned with bare hands. Planted what she could. Watched what survived. She whispered to the small trees by the vineyard, gave them compost and water and affection, untangled them from the grasp of thorns. Along the ragged edge where forest met yard, she cut back brambles and weeds, made paths she could walk barefoot in summer without fear.
Snakes still lurked in shadow. She saw them sometimes—grayish bodies, horns like thorns above narrow eyes. She stayed calm, moved away slowly, never turning her back. The stories said they were poisonous, and she believed it. But fear didn't stop her. She made the land hers by tending it.
Sometimes she sat near the vineyard at dusk, Ashu resting beside her, and watched the fireflies blink through the tall grass. She could hear the laughter from the house, the rise and fall of shallow conversations. But they weren't her people. Their world was loud and fleeting. Hers was slow, rooted, listening.
And so, while the others burned time and dull smoke, she built something else. Not always visible. But growing. Layer by layer. Breath by breath.
As the years passed and she continued to build her quiet world, the season of flowers arrived—early blossoms on the trees, vines waking, the earth warm and breathing again. She sat alone in the grass one morning, surrounded by new growth, but something felt off. A strange, heavy stillness settled over her, like mist in the bones. Confusion and sorrow—untouchable, unexplainable—curled around her chest. Something was wrong.
She stayed there, unmoving, until her old secondhand phone buzzed in her pocket. The screen flickered dimly as she answered.
Her brother's wife spoke, voice sharp and hurried:
"Your father had an accident. A log rolled over him. The rescue team is on the way."
The call cut. The silence returned, thicker than before.
She waited in the grass, trembling, clutching the phone in her lap. Two hours passed before she called her sister, needing to hear more—needing to know. But instead of comfort, she was met with a voice full of fury.
"Our father DIED. How dare you call and ask how he is! You were told he died!"
The world cracked. The phone slipped from her hand and landed in the grass. And she cried. She cried so deeply, so helplessly, that she couldn't form words. Her chest shook, her body curled inward. It poured out of her like water bursting through a broken dam.
Her husband found her like that—sobbing in the grass. He dragged her into the car without asking, as if emotions were inconveniences to be handled. Fifteen minutes into the drive, as her cries refused to stop, he snapped—his voice rough and cold:
"Stop crying."
So she tried. She muffled her sobs into the fabric of her sleeve, biting them back until they became small, aching gasps. But the pain didn't shrink. It hollowed her.
She had felt something was wrong. But never—not for a moment—had she imagined it would be her father.
She was driven to her old family home by her husband. Inside, the air was thick with grief. Her mother wept on the sofa and, the moment she sat down, placed her head in her lap like a child needing comfort. Stroking her mother's hair with slow, gentle hands, she swallowed her own sobs. Her tears were buried beneath the weight of duty—her mother needed calm, not collapse.
Around her, family members wore their emotions in various shades. Some let sorrow spill openly from their eyes, while others seemed hollow, as if the news hadn't reached their hearts at all. She sat quietly, observing, too numb to speak.
Outside, the vehicle meant to transport his body waited. Someone asked if she wanted to see him one last time.
"No," she answered, her voice small but firm.
She was terrified of what she'd see—his body broken under the weight of fallen logs, the forest's final cruelty still marked on him. She couldn't bear it. She wanted to remember him whole: smiling in the sun, teaching her to fix things, pointing out edible plants on their walks, stirring pots of food while humming tunes. That was her father. Not the broken body in the van.
As people drifted away and the house grew quiet, her mother turned to her. "Will you stay tonight?" she asked, eyes heavy with pleading.
There was a long pause before she replied, "No. I will go back home with my husband."
She didn't fully understand why her mother had asked. Perhaps grief made her reach for closeness. But she felt like a guest there now, not a daughter. She hugged her mother in silence, then climbed into the car as evening fell.
And they drove away, leaving the house dim and heavy with absence.