Helena was returning from the meadow when the evening began settling on the slopes like a warm, velvety mist. Her traditional highlander outfit moved with each step — the embroidered skirt swayed softly around her hips, and the white blouse tightened under the corset, embracing her body as if it remembered every line of tension from the day. Her hair was braided into a long thick plait, with a few strands loosened by the wind, caressing her cheeks.
Inside the wooden cabin, he waited by the fireplace, leaning over a cup of pine-needle tea. When she entered, he lifted his gaze, and there was something in his eyes she couldn’t name — a silence that felt like an answer to a question she didn’t know she had asked. She removed the shawl from her shoulders, and he watched the gesture with an attention so gentle it felt like intention, not hunger.
She sat beside him, feeling the heat from the fire seep through the fabric of her shirt and settle against her skin. Her hands were still cold from the mountain air, so she rested them on the table, unknowingly close enough that when their fingers brushed, she wondered whether it was an accident or an invitation.
“Long day?” he asked quietly.
“A little,” she answered, though it wasn’t the day that tired her — it was everything she kept inside.
When he touched her hand, he did it slowly, as if he were touching not skin but a story written beneath it. His fingers slid along her braid, adjusting a strand that had fallen onto her neck. The place he touched warmed instantly, like resin melting under flame.
Helena closed her eyes, letting the moment unfold the way a woolen skirt opens in the wind — wide, unhurried, without any demand. Her breath began to match his, and the tension she carried from the meadow dissolved in a single second when he leaned closer, not to claim her, but to share the same temperature of silence.
She realized then that the most beautiful intimacy doesn’t come from impulse. It comes from how two people allow themselves to soften toward each other before touching anything more than hands.
