Amara felt the moment his wakefulness folded the way one feels a tide turn through the bones rather than the eyes, a long-held tension easing inward until it no longer pressed against the edges of the world.
It did not leave him. It gathered, drawing the quiet, exacting attention he carried through everything down into a deeper seat, where it could rest without losing what it was.
She turned.
Gabriel's gaze was already there, settled on her with a calm that did not ask to be shared because it already was.
The recognition between them needed no shape. It passed cleanly, whole as it arrived.
Amara lowered herself into the grass.
The motion belonged to her now. Her knees folded beneath her, the ground receiving her with that steady, living patience the garden extended to all things within it.
The blades bent, cool against her skin, and held. She settled beside him, close enough that the space between them carried intention rather than accident.
Her eyes came to rest on his face.
