Her Turn to Welcome

The sun stood higher now, and the last of the morning’s chill had burned away from the garden. She was bent over the new bloom, tending it with a small and reverent care, when she looked up and saw the man. He stood at the edge of the garden, hesitant, holding no tools, only his own uncertainty, and she knew the shape of that stillness, for it had once been her own.

The rope-maker was not far off, but his attention was bent to his own work, and he did not see. It was her gaze the stranger met, and in the meeting of their eyes she felt something turn quietly within her. The need to be welcomed, which had carried her across this threshold not so long ago, had given way to something else: a rising, unhurried urge to be the one who welcomes.

She did not move, not yet. She only held his gaze, steady and unafraid, a silent acknowledgment offered exactly as it had once been offered to her. It was an invitation, unspoken but clear, and in the giving of it the cycle turned again, one place further along its patient course.