Morning arrived the way the house preferred it: without announcement.
Atlas woke first to the familiar sound of the river and the warmer, heavier weight of two bodies against him. Clara's head rested on his chest; Eli's leg remained hooked over both of theirs. The blanket had slipped during the night. Soft light moved across the floorboards in the same slow stripe it always did.
For a long moment he simply lay there, cataloguing the ordinary facts: the scent of shared skin, the distant clink of Lara moving in the front room, the absence of any residual tension in the house.
He kept his breathing even so he wouldn't wake them yet. Clara's hair had come loose from its usual braid and spilled across his collarbone. Eli's hand lay open on his stomach, fingers relaxed.
