Orphan In A Storm

Winter’s cold eyes seemed to watch her from the other side of the glass. When Rhea opened the blinds, the garden crouched under a hard, pewter sky—colourless, waiting like an adversary she’d never agreed to fight. Even the air seemed poised to steal something from her if she stepped outside. She drew her dressing gown tight and muttered the dreaded word—Christmas. It offered little relief; it merely voiced the echo of a life that felt unreachable, though saying it aloud shifted something inside her chest.

Every year, she and Lyndsey had stood together in the marketplace, waiting for the mayor to switch on the lights. Children’s faces glowing as they rode carousel horses. The breathless hush before the high street burst into colour. The annual ritual of brightness.

This year, she hadn’t gone.

She could have chosen company—a woman from a cancer fundraising committee had invited her for Christmas dinner—but the promise of forced cheer had made her stomach knot. She didn’t want to eat turkey or chestnuts, no matter how perfectly roasted. She didn’t want to play charades or make polite chit-chat. None of that.

She wanted Lyndsey.

She descended the stairs with more energy than she felt. The kitchen shimmered with the appliances Lyndsey had insisted on buying, all gleaming like offerings. Rhea stood at the counter grinding coffee by hand, remembering her student days working as a barista—an old ritual that steadied her now.

Afterwards, she rolled out her exercise mat. Thirty minutes of squats, press-ups, stretching until her body burned. Pain she could manage. Clean pain. Not the lasting kind.

Somewhere in the ache, she imagined Lyndsey’s approval—faint, impossible, but real enough to keep her breathing.

Lyndsey. Lyndsey. Lyndsey. How could someone loved that deeply be gone?

Rhea didn’t believe in an afterlife, but silence was worse than talking to a void. And if pain proved she was still alive, maybe movement proved she hadn’t given up.

Even so, breakfast for one felt more like loyalty than hunger. Poached eggs, toast, vegetarian sausages—Lyndsey’s mantra echoing: Breakfast sets you up for the day. Rhea ate, swallowing memories more than food.

She opened her laptop to find an empty inbox. Her day stretched out holding nothing but space.

Still, she found herself putting on her coat and heading toward town, a route she’d avoided for months. Prepared to risk the pitying looks, the awkward pauses, the people who crossed the street to avoid her grief—even though she dreaded all of it.

Her breath billowed white in the biting air. The river had burst its banks, flooding the car park and licking at the edges of the park. A full year since Lyndsey’s death, and the loss still crushed like a heavy weight inside her.

Everyone seemed strangely comfortable using the word cancer. And yet she hated the way it had taken her sister, friends, and finally Lyndsey. After her first loss, she’d sworn she would fight back—so she left her well-paid legal job and took over the cancer charity shop. Under her guidance, the place had thrived. Lyndsey had championed her, bridging the income gap with her own salary. Two birds, one stone, she’d said.

But then came Clarissa—all stilettos and corporate zeal—sweeping in as though dropped off by a passing storm.

Her vision: Time to rejuvenate this tired store!

Rhea’s maxim: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

They were doomed from the start.

Arguments followed—criticisms about displays, pricing, even some stray cobwebs. The final blow came when Clarissa dragged her arm along an entire rail of clothes, sending them to the floor and declaring them unfit for sale.

Rhea had thrown down her keys, heat rising up her neck. You run it, then – if you think you can do a better job.

She’d stormed home and collapsed into Lyndsey’s arms, furious at letting Clarissa get to her, forcing her to abandon a place she loved.

But within days, Lyndsey’s cancer returned. After that, everything else fell away.

They fought it again—treatments, trials, immunotherapy that bought them months they carved into adventures: stargazing abroad, bucket-list trips, nights taken back from the ticking clock.

Until Lyndsey finally chose peace over prolongation.

And Rhea had honoured that wish until the last breath.

A violent gust of wind tore her from the memory. Leaves spiralled upward. Flyers advertising a Christmas circus were ripped from lampposts. The sky darkened into a metallic churn, as though some vast mechanism had begun to turn behind the clouds.

Then the wind paused.

The world held its breath.

Something altered..

It came out of nowhere—a heron, shaken loose from the storm like an orphan suddenly unmoored. At first, the word heron felt wrong. The creature was all contradictions: elegant yet awkward, huge yet dainty, grey yet somehow vivid against the colourless morning. Silence clung to it, but the silence felt shrill, like a vibration beneath skin.

It belonged on tidal flats, among misshapen reeds. Not on a flooded high street.

A sudden blast caught it mid-flight. The bird jerked sideways, wings flailing, as though the weather had caught it by the spine. With a violent shudder of neck and legs, it crash-landed on the pavement ahead of her.

Rhea gasped, dropping her handbag. Its contents scattered across the wet ground. As she knelt to gather them, her fingers closed around something cold and familiar.

Her charity shop keys.

She stared. Why were they still in her bag? Why now?

The heron croaked—a low, ancient sound—and turned its amber eye toward the boarded-up shop windows. A gust tore a plank free with a cracking snap.

The bird limped forward.

“Oh no. Don’t you dare,” Rhea whispered—though she was already rising, keys clenched so tightly their teeth bit into her palm.

The heron watched. She fiddled with the lock for a bit until the key turned. It followed her in.

Inside, the shop felt hollow—like the belly of an abandoned ship. Dust sheets shrouded the counters. Mannequins leaned at odd angles in the window bay, frozen mid-fall. The air held the stale weight of a place that had been shut in too long.

She had once commanded this space—lightly, confidently. The volunteers’ faces flashed in her memory. Her own voice, certain and brisk: We need this. Can you go and fetch that? Their questions: Where shall we put this, Rhea? What do you want us to do next?

Until Clarissa.

The heron clicked across the floor, paused at the centre, then tapped its bill sharply against the cash desk—a knock that seemed to be meant for her. Dust stirred in a faint halo.

Rhea imagined how Lyndsey would have laughed at the solemn absurdity of it. Also, how touched she would have been.

The heron lifted its head, gave a resonant croak, then slipped out through the broken board into the rain.

By the time Rhea reached the doorway, it was gone.

Only a notice trembled on the glass:

Due to staff sickness, the shop will be closed until further notice.

A pulse of grief—and something perilously close to purpose—tightened beneath her ribs.

Back home, she phoned Jackie.

“Rhea! Finally. Back from the land of the dead?” Jackie’s voice crackled with rough affection.

Condolences were exchanged, Lyndsey’s anniversary skirted carefully.

“It all went downhill after you left,” Jackie said. “Clarissa hired a clone of herself. Disaster. Have you thought about coming back?”

“I’m meant to be retired.”

Jackie snorted. “You? Retire? Please.”

“And Clarissa?”

“Gone. Didn’t get on with her boss.”

“Takes one to know one,” Rhea said, surprising herself with the smallest smile.

“If you wanted to rebuild the team,” Jackie added, “we’d welcome you back. We need you.”

After the call, Rhea stood at the window. The frost hadn’t set yet. The garden waited—there were fleeces to wrap, bulbs lying dormant in the soil. Before long, the snowdrops would appear. Lyndsey had always walked lighter in spring.

Rhea reached into her pocket and drew out the keys.

Then she froze.

Soft grey down clung to the grooves—unmistakably feathers. As though the heron had held them in its beak.

Impossible. Yet real.

The house quietly exhaled around her.

She wrapped her fingers around the keys, their cool weight steadying her pulse. Outside, the storm loosened, shedding its fury until only a damp hush remained, as though the sky itself were clearing its throat.

Maybe coincidence.

Maybe a message.

Either way, something inside her lifted.

Rhea straightened, breathing deeply as courage—not the old, brittle kind, but something supple and new—filled the space grief had left behind.

She turned toward the window. The clouds were thinning, washed pale and fading.

Somewhere beyond the rooftops, a grey shape lifted into the clearing light, broad wings catching the last shreds of storm, steady and sure.

Rhea watched it rise and felt herself rising with it.