Chapter 5: Where the Letters Go
The rain had softened by morning, leaving beads of water along the window panes like the house had been weeping gently through the night. Outside, the garden exhaled the scent of soaked earth, basil, and old jasmine roots. Anya sat by the low table in the kitchen, pen in hand, staring at a blank sheet of rice paper. The candle beside her was nearly burned down. Oriana moved in the background, barefoot and quiet, making tea without speaking.
"I don't know how to start," Anya whispered.
Oriana walked over, placed the tea beside her, and kissed the crown of her head.
"Just begin like you're whispering," she said. "She'll hear."
Anya pressed the pen to paper, and slowly, like petals opening after rain, began to write.
To the woman my grandmother loved—
I never knew your name until yesterday. Sopa. It sounds like something soft, like a lullaby only trees remember. And maybe that's fitting, because I think you waited for her the way trees wait—without accusation, without rust.
She loved you. I know this now. I know it in the way her letters held your name like a fragile bird, too delicate to land.
She told me to never hide. To never let the world's rules bury my heart. I think she wanted me to live the life she couldn't. So here I am, in her house, writing to the woman she left behind, hoping these words can be a bridge instead of an apology.
You were her first spring. I will always remember that.
And if the wind still carries messages between the living and those we loved… I hope this reaches your hands.
With gratitude and gentleness,
Anya.
When she finished, she folded the paper carefully and pressed it between two petals Oriana had dried the night before. The ink was still a little wet, smudging softly like mist on glass.
She turned to Oriana. "Now you."
Oriana blinked. "Me?"
"You loved her too—my grandmother. Not like I did, but you saw her. That counts."
Oriana hesitated, then pulled a second sheet of paper from the drawer, sat beside Anya, and began writing slowly.
To Sopa and to Sopa's silence—
You don't know me. But I knew her. I knew the way she stirred tea twice before sipping. The way she stood barefoot in the morning and watched the sky like it was something she used to love. I knew the hush in her voice when she spoke of "someone once."
I think I've loved someone like you. I think I still do.
And I think what you two had—though hidden, though unfinished—was not incomplete. Because it led here. To this letter. To this love I hold now.
Some stories echo across generations. Yours is one of them. And if I can carry even a piece of it forward, let it be this: love leaves something behind. Always. Even when the world refuses to see it.
With quiet reverence,
Oriana.
They sealed the letters together in a fabric pouch and tied it with a blue ribbon—Anya's grandmother's favorite color.
"Where will we keep them?" Oriana asked.
Anya thought for a long moment, then smiled. "The tree."
The almond tree in the back garden was older than the house. Its roots wrapped around a half-buried stone wall, and its branches stretched like arms remembering every child that ever climbed them. Her grandmother used to say the tree listened better than people did.
Anya dug a small space beneath it and placed the letters there, not buried, just tucked.
"They belonged to silence for so long," she said. "Now they belong to the earth."
Oriana rested her cheek to Anya's shoulder. "They're home."
That afternoon, they sat on the porch and made plans.
"We'll call it something soft," Anya said. "Nothing that sounds like charity or healing. Just something that welcomes."
"What about…" Oriana paused. "The Listening House?"
Anya smiled. "Perfect."
They started with what they had. A broom. Old curtains washed and mended. A guest ledger, handwritten. Oriana painted a small wooden sign with white lotus flowers in the corners. Anya placed a teapot on the sill beside the front door and lit a stick of sandalwood incense, letting the smoke curl into the sky like an invitation.
Soon, they would tell others. Not many—just a few friends, a few women who needed quiet. Word would spread gently, not like a fire but like warmth.
That evening, they sat beneath the tree with bowls of rice and grilled eggplant, wrapped in blankets. The lantern above them flickered golden.
"Do you think she would've come back?" Anya asked suddenly.
Oriana looked up. "Your grandmother?"
Anya nodded.
"If she'd written sooner? Or dared to say it aloud?"
Oriana thought for a long time, then said, "Maybe not in this life. But I think… we're what she came back as. We're the answer to a question she never got to ask."
Anya stared up at the night sky. "Then let's keep answering."
That night, they made love slowly, without words.
It wasn't urgent, or desperate.
It was layered with history and knowing. With every letter, every silence, every prayer whispered into the hands of women who loved women and were told not to. It was a kind of healing only bodies could give each other—a truth passed down through touch.
Afterward, Anya lay tangled in the sheets, her breath easing, her fingers curled in Oriana's hair.
"Promise me something," she whispered.
"Anything."
"When I'm old and forget things—when I don't remember where the letters are buried or what the Listening House was meant to be—remind me."
Oriana kissed her wrist. "I'll write it in every room."
The rain didn't return the next day, but the wind did.
It moved through the open windows and across the kitchen floor. It caught the edge of the sign Oriana had painted, spinning it gently.
And it passed through the almond tree, where two letters rested in peace.
It knew.
And it carried the knowing onward.