Chapter 1 - The Things That Wait
1607 Words
The rain had stopped during the night.
Only the small droplets remained.
They clung to the edge of the balcony railing like tiny glass beads, waiting for the sun, which had not yet decided whether it wanted to rise or hide behind the heavy clouds a little longer.
Elena slowly began to wake.
She stayed where she was, eyes closed.
Not because she was tired.
But because something was still holding on to her.
A dream? Or perhaps something that had been a dream.
There had been mist.
That much she knew.
She could no longer see it, but her chest still felt heavy with it.
She could almost hear water.
Small waves breaking against stones.
Somewhere far away. Or perhaps right beside her.
For a moment, she thought someone had said something.
Not loudly.
Not clearly.
More like a whisper that disappeared the very moment she tried to listen.
Then it was gone. Like it always was.
She pulled the blanket a little higher around her shoulders.
"You could at least finish the story," she murmured.
The silence did not answer.
Perhaps that was what she liked most about it.
Elena stayed still one moment longer.
Then opened her eyes.
The dream was gone.
All that remained was the strange feeling of having forgotten something important.
She knew that feeling. It came often.
Elena flung off her duvet, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
The floor was cold beneath her bare feet.
Elena instinctively curled her toes slightly, but she did not take the slippers sitting beside her bed.
They had been there for almost a year.
Almost unused.
She had bought them one afternoon because she thought they were cute.
Small and soft, lined with something that was supposed to resemble wool.
She had worn them once.
Then she had forgotten about them.
Or perhaps she had simply never grown used to not being able to feel the floor.
She walked to the balcony door and opened it.
The cool morning air rushed inside.
It smelled of wet earth.
Of rain.
Of leaves.
Somewhere farther down the street, a blackbird sang a single note, as if testing its voice before the rest of the world woke up.
Elena leaned forward.
Closed her eyes.
Breathed in.
Something inside her settled into place.
It was a small thing.
So small that she would never have been able to explain it to anyone.
But she had always needed fresh air.
More than most people.
She did not know why.
"Good morning," she said.
To the bird.
To the rain.
To the world.
She did not quite know what she was greeting.
But it felt rude not to say hello.
The apartment was not large.
But it was hers.
That was enough.
The furniture was not there because it matched.
It was there because every single piece had found its way to her at some point.
The desk had belonged to a flea market on a rainy Saturday.
The dining table had belonged to an elderly neighbour who no longer had room for it.
The dark armchair in the corner had a loose stitch in the armrest that Elena had promised herself she would repair for almost two years.
She never got around to it.
Instead, there was always a soft wool blanket draped over the back.
She liked things that carried traces of having been used.
Her own illustrations hung on the walls.
Not all of them.
Some were packed away.
Others stood in folders or lay between books on her desk.
But most of the ones she loved had found a place on the walls.
An old chestnut branch.
A collection of wild herbs.
A fern where every single leaf had been drawn with such care that one could almost imagine the cool forest floor where it grew.
Thistles.
Yarrow.
Wood sorrel.
Mushrooms with small, uneven caps.
An old branch covered in moss.
Elena had always thought plants deserved more attention than people gave them.
They grew quietly.
They survived winter.
They put down roots before anyone noticed they were there.
She liked that.
She liked looking at something long enough to notice what everyone else walked past.
That was probably also why she drew.
Or perhaps she drew because she did not always know how to say things in other ways.
She stopped in front of an illustration.
A wolf.
It was drawn with charcoal.
The fur was dark around the shoulders.
The eyes almost silver-grey.
Elena looked at it.
"You look like you know something I don't."
The wolf did not answer.
Fortunately.
She smiled faintly.
Then she walked into the kitchen.
In the kitchen stood a small wooden box with six jars.
Each jar had a handwritten label.
Chamomile.
Jasmine.
Forest berries.
Green sencha.
Spiced chai.
And the last one:
Rooibos — salted caramel & orange peel.
Elena took the jar down.
The dried pieces of orange lay among the amber-coloured leaves, and somehow a few small petals had found their way inside as well.
She unscrewed the lid.
The scent made her smile.
Caramel.
Orange.
Something warm and almost honey-like.
It reminded her of autumn.
Of wool sweaters.
Of candles.
Of something she could not put into words.
Something old.
Something safe.
She measured the tea into her small filter.
She placed a kettle of water on the stove.
Elena leaned against the kitchen counter.
She had never understood people who thought waiting needed to be filled.
Some moments were meant to simply exist.
The kettle whistled.
She poured the water over the tea.
Steam rose.
The scent spread through the kitchen.
Elena wrapped her hands around the cup.
She never drank the first sip immediately.
The tea needed time to settle.
Like people.
On the dining table lay her portfolio.
It was large.
And filled with paper.
It contained her work drawings and illustrations.
It was heavy with all the work hidden between its pages.
Elena picked it up and sat down.
She had gone through it the night before.
She had to.
Not because she expected everything to be perfect.
She didn't.
She knew there was no such thing as perfect.
But she also knew there was a difference between something being finished and something you had given up on.
That was the difference she was always searching for.
She opened the portfolio.
The first illustration showed an old magnolia branch.
The heavy flowers hung from the branches, and the delicate veins in the petals were drawn with such precision that Elena could almost feel their softness beneath her fingertips.
The next page was a collection of herbs.
Sage.
Yarrow.
Wood sorrel.
Small plants that most people walked past without seeing.
Elena hadn't.
She had drawn them from every angle.
With fresh leaves.
With dried stems.
With seeds.
With roots.
She had drawn everything.
She turned the page.
Ferns.
Thistles.
Mushrooms.
Bark.
Moss.
A series of illustrations for a project about Nordic medicinal plants.
Another for a book about plants growing in places where humans rarely went.
That was what she was good at.
Seeing.
Continuing to see.
Noticing the small differences.
The almost invisible change in the colour of a leaf.
The way light fell through a flower.
The fine lines in bark that told the story of a tree that had survived more than one winter.
Elena loved it.
It was not necessarily the big things that interested her.
It was what grew quietly.
What survived.
What found a way to continue existing.
She turned another page.
Then came the images that did not truly belong.
Elena stopped.
A forest.
A fjord covered in mist.
A causeway disappearing into white.
She did not know why she had drawn them.
She only knew that they had appeared.
Not as ideas.
More like something that had already existed somewhere inside her.
She had never been to a fjord like that.
She had never walked along that causeway.
And yet, there was something in the drawing that felt familiar.
As if the place was waiting somewhere behind her eyes, at the edge of a dream she almost remembered.
Elena closed the portfolio.
Those illustrations were not going with her.
They were not professional.
They were simply hers.
She took a sip of her tea.
It was still warm.
She took a shower.
Washed her long, caramel-coloured, wavy hair.
She dried it with a towel and left it hanging loosely around her face and down her back as she walked around the apartment, trying to decide what to wear.
The first outfit was too formal.
The second made her look like someone who had tried too hard to look relaxed.
The third one was actually fine.
She kept it.
Elena had never been particularly good with clothes.
She could spend days deciding what colour a flower should have in an illustration.
But when it came to herself, she often ended up standing in front of her wardrobe thinking:
This is probably fine.
And then hoping that it was.
She found her earrings.
One of them was missing.
She looked under the bed.
In the bathroom.
In the kitchen.
She finally found it in a small bowl by the door, where she had placed it the evening before.
"Of course."
She put it on.
Then she grabbed her jacket.
The portfolio.
The bag.
The phone.
She stood still for a moment in the middle of the living room.
The wolf on the wall watched her.
"It's just a meeting."
She pointed at it.
"Don't start."
The wolf still said nothing.
Elena took her keys, and stepped out into the street.
- Writer
