Alora
The kitchen is warm when we enter. Not the suffocating, skin-too-tight kind of heat that’s been riding me for the past several days—this is real warmth. Hearth-warmth. The kind that smells faintly of freshly baked bread, woodsmoke, and something slightly herbal that I can’t quite place.
The woman guides me over to a small table that is tucked next to the far wall. My legs are still shaky enough that I don’t argue with her when she presses a hand between my shoulders and nudges me down into a chair.
“Sit,” she says firmly, already turning away like she knows I’ll listen.
She isn't wrong. I don't feel like my legs can hold my body up for much longer. The chair legs scrape softly against the stone floor as I lower myself fully onto it, my palms flattening against the tabletop to ste
