The Courtyard Has No Sky

The mornings in Ernakulam began before the sun did. Aarya would hear her grandmother first - the soft, rhythmic murmur of prayer rising from the corner of the main room where Ammachi kept her small brass gods polished to a warm gold. Then her mother's footsteps, deliberate and unhurried, moving toward the kitchen. Then the cough of her father clearing his throat in the way he did every morning as though greeting the day required an announcement.
Then the children - her younger siblings unspooling from sleep into noise with the effortless chaos of people who have never once wondered whether their presence was welcome. By the time Aarya opened her eyes, the house was already alive without her.