The morning arrives slowly, reluctantly, like it's not sure it wants to wake the world.
Outside the glass wall, the hills stretch beneath a sky pale with dawn. The long trees sway softly in the cold air, their branches whispering as the first sunlight spills over the highest peaks, catching every droplet of night dew still clinging to the grass. The stones glisten. The leaves sparkle. Thin fog lingers between the trees, silver and soft against the waking hills.
Inside the wooden room, morning light pours through the glass wall. At first it's only a thin golden thread stretching across the floor. Then more. Then all of it. Warmth slowly fills the room, the wooden boards glowing beneath the sunlight while dust motes drift lazily through the beams, like they have nowhere to be and all day to get there.
The red petals scattered across the floor last night have already begun curling at the edges, their color deepening in the warmth.
I move beneath the sheets.
Slowly.
