Liora woke to the sound of rain tapping the tin roof above her.
She didn't sit up right away. The bed was warm, and the room still held the night's quiet like a breath not yet exhaled. Through the half-open window, the scent of mint and wet soil drifted in, familiar and sweet.
Somewhere outside, the old train tracks steamed beneath the morning drizzle.
She used to sit out there with her grandfather, watching rust bloom on the metal and flowers grow up through the gravel. He always said the world would forget those tracks one day. That trains would stop coming. That when they did, the garden would finally win.
He was right.
The last train had come three years ago.
The tracks now bent slightly left where the roots of the lemon tree had pushed up from below, and vines had crept between the wooden ties like green veins reclaiming the bones of something dead.
Liora rose, stretched, and padded barefoot across the wood floor. The house was quiet. Her parents were still asleep, or maybe already gone to the market.
She didn't need to check.
Everything today would happen slowly. That was the promise of the garden after the rain.
She made tea without measuring.
She walked out without shoes.
The earth was cool underfoot, the kind of cool that felt like an apology for yesterday's heat. The sky was still heavy with clouds, but not cruel ones—just slow-moving and low-hanging, like a lullaby in weather form.
She sat at the edge of the tracks, where the gravel met moss, and let the mug warm her hands.
The flowers had changed color again. They always did after storms.
Today they were blue.
Tomorrow—maybe yellow.
There was no reason for it.
But it made her smile.
She didn't speak.
She didn't write anything down.
She just sat.
And for a while, she relaxed.