The One Who Learned to Rest

She closed her eyes the way some people close doors. Not to shut anything out, but to finally stop holding them open.

The blue behind her was not sky. It was not water. It was the color that comes when a person stops performing stillness and simply becomes still. It had no edge. It asked for nothing.

Her hair fell uneven, as if it had grown without being noticed, the way quiet things do. The fringe brushed her brow like a curtain drawn halfway. Enough to shelter, not enough to hide.

In her hand, low and nearly forgotten, she held a small stone. River-smooth and warm from being carried too long. She did not remember picking it up. She only knew that every time she set it down, her hands felt wrong without it. The way a room feels wrong without its single window.

The warmth on her face came from somewhere she could not name. It gathered at her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, the corners of her mouth. Not blush. Not fever. Just the heat that surfaces when a body remembers it is allowed to stop.

Her coat was dark and heavy, the kind of garment that carries its own weather. It held the cold so she didn't have to. Underneath it, her breathing slowed into something steady and old, like a rhythm borrowed from tides.

She had spent a long time wearing alertness like armor.

Before this, there had been walking. Before the walking, there had been standing still in the wrong places. Before that, a version of her that ran. Each one had led here; eyes closed, stone in hand, the blue collecting behind her like dusk returning to a familiar field.

It would come again. The alertness. The walking. The standing still in rooms that didn't fit. She knew this the way the stone knew the river; not with fear, but with the patience of something that had been shaped by repetition.

But for now, she rested.

And the blue held.