Garden Lanterns

Maeve woke up feeling unusually rested, the kind of sleep that made her body feel lighter. For a moment, she didn’t even realize it was already noon. When her eyes finally adjusted to the light seeping through the paper shoji screens, she blinked in surprise.

She wasn’t lying on a Western-style bed. Instead, she was on a futon laid neatly over tatami mats. At first, she had assumed she wouldn’t l