A Christmas Crisis Exchange- Asha's Beginnings Chapter 13
A Christmas Crisis Exchange-
Asha's Beginnings Chapter 13
continued from Chapter 12
Asha pushed open the heavy door of the Exchange, leaving behind the clamor of last-minute shoppers and the thin, metallic carols drifting through the air. The cold night met her with a clean, sharp breath. Snow had begun to fall, thick and silent, softening the world. She pulled her coat tighter, shoulders curving inward against more than the winter, and turned down the narrow alley behind the shops. No one followed. No one ever did.
She hadn’t decided to go to Berta’s cabin. She only knew she couldn’t stay among the bright, hollow lights of the town. Her feet carried her without thought, past the last streetlamp and into the dark. Snow clung to her lashes. Her breath vanished into the cold. She was hardly inside her body anymore, more a watcher than a walker, following the faint silver glimmer of memory that seemed to guide her steps—thin as moonlight, steady as pulse.
The ache in her joints, the weight in her chest, the endless loop of anger and fatigue, all of it dulled into a haze. She walked without choosing the way, yet every turn proved right. The deeper she went, the quieter it became, until even the air seemed to hum, a silence threaded with something gentle, almost kind.
Berta’s cabin waited in its clearing, a secret kept by the trees. Asha had always known the path, though she hadn’t meant to come. Perhaps her body had been following that same silver thread all along.
Ahead, a soft light shone through the woods, the cabin window glowing warm in the snow-dark. Smoke curved upward from the chimney. Asha stopped at the edge of the clearing. Snow melted against her cheeks. Something inside her loosened and began, at last, to trust the dark.
The door stood ajar, as it always did for strays and the weary. Inside, warmth gathered close and fragrant, woodsmoke and cinnamon, fire and tea. Asha stepped across the threshold. At the small wooden table sat Berta, gray hair loose around her shoulders, hands cupped around a mug. She looked up, her eyes luminous in the firelight.
Berta didn’t ask why she had come. She simply rose, opened her arms, and said softly, “Come here, love. Sit with me a while.”
Asha sat. The door clicked shut behind her. Snow slid quietly from her boots and puddled on the floor. She folded forward, her face in her hands. Only then did she feel herself return, trembling, heavy, alive.
Berta poured tea, waited, listened. The fire murmured between them, the silence a shelter rather than a void.
When words finally came, they spilled out raw, anger at the world, at men, at herself; the dull ache of bodies that failed and faith that promised healing but only delivered waiting. She spoke of Mary, both Marys, pierced and grieving, tears that never ceased. She spoke of saints who seemed to linger just beyond reach.
Berta nodded gently. When Asha asked, voice breaking, when faith becomes delusion, she answered without pretense or certainty. And when Asha whispered, “I’m tired, Berta. So tired of carrying wounds I never asked for nor should a child ever known, of believing only to be broken again,” Berta reached for her.
Asha fell into her arms. Her head rested against Berta’s shoulder. One hand smoothed her hair; the other rested over her heart.
“I know, my love,” Berta said. “You’re tired. Bone-tired. Soul-tired. Tired in places without names.”
The fire cracked softly. Silence filled the spaces between their breaths.
Far from the hollow noise of the Exchange, Asha was held. No fixing, no forced cheer, only the warmth of being seen.
Above them, the two Marys kept watch, love unbroken although their tears fell still. The saints at the threshold stood in wordless vigil. Through all of it ran that same silver thread of care, quiet, unspooling, never lost.
Outside, snow kept falling, steady and unending. Inside, the fire burned low. And for the first time in a long while, Asha rested, fully home in her own body, because it had known the way when her mind could not.
Later, as the night deepened and the coals turned to embers, a faint shimmer touched the frost on the windowpane. It might have been starlight. Or something older than stars. It lingered there in the hush, fine as breath, strong as promise.
A silver thread of care, running through the cold, through the dark, through the long ache of the world, offering no answers, only presence, which sometimes is all a miracle needs to begin.
Author's/Artist's Note: I am a disabled survivor using assistive technology, which changes day by day pending health - (#zebralife). -to allow me to create, based on my needs on any given day - Art Therapy. We all can find ways.
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