Elara Vale

When I met her for coffee, the first thing I noticed wasn’t her voice or her eyes,it was the way she smelled. Not like perfume, but like warmth and skin and something a little sweet, maybe vanilla or her shampoo. When she leaned in to say hi, that scent mixed with the coffee in the air and just stuck with me. It wasn’t overpowering, just enough to make me want to get a little closer, maybe pretend I didn’t quite catch what she said so she’d lean in again.