Just sunlight.
It slipped through the curtains in soft lines, landing gently across the dress hanging by the window—the one she had stitched with her own hands, thread by thread, night after night.
She woke before her alarm, the way people do when something important is waiting.
For a moment, she lay still, listening to the silence of her home. It wasn’t the lonely kind anymore. It felt… full. Like every year she had lived was sitting there with her, not as a weight—but as company.
Seventy-five years.
And today, she wasn’t looking back.
She sat up slowly, her joints reminding her of time, but her heart ignoring it completely. She reached for her robe and walked toward the dress.
For a long moment, she didn’t touch it.
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