Named by Light

She had stepped out of the shade the way some people leave a room they no longer need. The path was ordinary - flowering trees, a strap of leather against her shoulder, the blue of a dress that had already slipped off one collarbone - but the light caught her as if it had been waiting. Sunglasses held the canopy in their lenses, a second forest mirrored where her eyes should have been, so the smile had to do all the talking. It did. A small silver star swung from her ear, catching the same sun that warmed her throat, and for a moment the afternoon felt less like weather and more like permission: to look up, to keep walking, to let the blossoms blur behind her while she carried the day on her skin.