summer dew dripping
AUG 27, 2026
The clock stands at six minutes past six in the evening. Wrapped only in the rough cotton of a bath towel, I lay motionless beneath the steady, mechanical breath of the air conditioner, letting the artificial cold wash over my limbs. My hair remains heavy and damp from the wash, a dark, heavy weight pooling against my back and framing my face. In twenty-five minutes, the world will demand that I dress, prepare my face, and step out. I watch the light shift on the ceiling, trapped in that quiet, vulnerable suspense, waiting to see if my body and hair will dry before the clock runs out.
It is late August in Athens. The heat is driving all living things into the shadows. To walk even a mile under the night sky is to labour against the air itself. Moisture gathers at the nape of my neck, pools along my spine, and runs in slow, deliberate tracks down the small of my back and beneath my breasts, staining the linen of my dress. A deep, sun-drugged silence has fallen over the quarters. The city is having its exodus, the empty streets belonging only to the dust, the heat, and the few stragglers that find themselves here.
I was not meant to be here. By all rights, I should have been up in the mountains, where the air smells of pine needle and summer dew dripping, sharing space with a friend. She had opened her house, a large three-bedroom place, had invited me for a few months, offering shelter and companionship. But the human mind is a fragile, shifting thing, prone to sudden, protective droughts. Five days after my arrival, a text message came, not a spoken word, but cold type on a small screen. She claimed the weight of her own life was too heavy; she was too tired, too crowded by existence to harbour a guest.
The next day, the house a place of ghosts and unspoken shame. My friend could not look me in the eye or face the truth of her own sudden retreat. Instead, she remained barricaded behind her bedroom door through the long morning and into the heat of the afternoon, hiding from the intimacy she had invited. When the time came, I gathered my things and took a slow, rattling bus down from the mountains and back into the concrete basin of Athens. There was no parting embrace, no hand extended in farewell.
I must rise from this bed, cast off the damp towel, and prepare my body to face the world. A new friend waits for me at a nearby restaurant. A small, honest place where I have already dined twice, completely smitten by the simple grace of its local cuisine and the clean, grounding quality of its plates. There is comfort in a kitchen that treats the earth’s yields with respect, a steady anchor in a shifting world.
✿
This morning broke with the heavy, uninvited burden of a thick and restless sleep. I awake late, after a night of my mind twisting itself into knots over the simple, impossible question of where I should go. That familiar ache of being unmoored, of feeling unwelcome and uncertain where to place my feet, tears at me from within, digging its fingernails into an ancient wound.
When the phone rings, its sharp chime breaks the silence. I know I must force my bleary eyes open to the other end of the line. She is calling from Spain, looking to catch up. For an hour, our voices sweep between vast topics, zoom down narrow thought pathways, and ping-pong our latest stories back and forth. We are two women windswept by the same gust of pervading uncertainty. A thick fog hangs over both our futures, refusing to shift; our minds will not reveal a clear action plan, leaving only our bodies to sway to a rhythmic, frustrating dance that says either yes or no to every option offered.
Then. “Why don’t you come here, and we can spend a week together?” she asks.
“Here” is Valencia. Dry, hot and by the seaside, baking under the Spanish sun.
“I’d love to,” I reply. “Let’s sleep on it and decide tomorrow.”
Even as the words leave my mouth, our bodies gush with an enthusiastic, instinctive yes at the mere potential of being together. We hang up. I search for flights. There is only one, and the screen warns that three seats remain. I text her: “Instead of sleeping on it, how about I book the flight?” She comes back joyful. I book the ticket. An hour later, a text flashes on my screen. “I got so excited I just went on a massive food haul, so we have lovely things to eat when you come.”
With a temporary anchor dropped in Spain, I turn to the labour of the day. There are three hours of client calls, followed by an hour of emails and another of administrative tasks. When it is finished, I rise from the small desk in the studio apartment. A temporary sanctuary I have rented for the week since being cast out of the mountains.
It is three in the afternoon. I have not yet eaten and wander out into the thick, unmoving heat and cross the road to a neighbourhood bakery. There, I buy a croissant stuffed with avocado, lettuce, tomato, and ham, along with a cold glass bottle of Coca-Cola. I sit outside at a small round table sheltered by the silver leaves of olive trees, eating half before wrapping it up, placing the remainder in my basket, and getting up carrying the Coke with me.
I walk to a nearby grocery store and buy an organic honeydew melon, a single ripe nectarine, five organic carrots, and half a litre of milk for my morning matcha. With my basket heavy, I return to the studio and place each thing in its respective, orderly place upon the kitchen counter and inside the small refrigerator.
A tiny plan begins to form in my mind—a purposeful errand. I take a long walk and seek out a pharmacy: Tretinoin cream for just four Euros; Mastiha capsules to soothe a troubled stomach; Korres olive body oil; wild oregano oil to ward off winter colds; Apivita toothpaste infused with royal jelly and bee pollen.
An hour and a half later, the errand is done. I return to the quiet apartment, shed the sweltering heat of the Athens streets, and step into the shower.
✿
She texts that she is running five minutes late. I nod to the waiter, ask for a table for two, and settle into the forest-green, French metal seating. This place is a secret—a perfect country garden hidden away behind the towering, sun-baked walls of Athens, a sudden sanctuary of ivy and cool stone.
Soon, she arrives, stepping through the gate. Our initial words are polite, but the conversation slows down, deepens, and steadily builds into a profound mutual understanding. It is always a little surreal to meet a follower from Instagram. The parasocial thread means she already knows about my life, my tastes, the small daily moments I share of my world, while I am only just learning the sound of her voice. I find myself completely at ease with this imbalanced beginning. The strange digital distance evaporates, and I slip into an easy, ancient familiarity. Sitting across from her, watching the way her hands move as she speaks, I begin to feel a genuine, quiet love for the woman opposite me.
She orders the shrimp orzo, its aroma rich with tomato and garlic. I order a pork chop, which arrives at the table so impossibly large it looks to be the size of my head. I eat half, steal a couple of golden fries, and feed the rest to the local cats—lean, beautiful creatures weaving ribbons around our ankles, stroking their soft flanks against our feet in search of a stray bite. I feel a sudden, sharp wave of gratitude to be sitting in this hidden garden, having found a kindred soul in a vast city.
After the violent, silent dismissal from a friendship earlier this week, two beautiful bonds have risen to meet me, restoring balance and harmony to my battered heart.
I am reminded of the incredible, almost fierce power of female friendship. When a woman is cast out, unmoored and wounded, it is almost always other women who quietly reach into the dark to pull her back to solid ground. From thousands of miles away in Spain, filling grocery baskets with treats just to say you are welcome here. Across a small wooden table in an Athens garden, offering a soft gaze and an open heart to a stranger from a screen.
This is the great, enduring currency of our lives: an ecosystem of solidarity that heals its own wounds. We are windswept by the same uncertainties; we suffer the same sudden droughts of the soul, but we also hold the rain for one another. As the night deepens, the pain in my chest begins to quiet, replaced by the warm, steady truth that I am not unwelcome in this world.
✿
Dear reader,
I want to try an experiment. At present, my personal writing here on Substack and the invitations to my professional work are deeply infused, tangled up in the same space.
I want to see what happens if I separate them—if I allow myself to creatively lift off into new, uncharted territories without being bound or defined by my obligations to the work, while still maintaining a clear, open pathway to keep you informed.
~ If you want to keep reading about my work, stay up to date with my projects, or continue receiving practical tips and tools, please sign up for my work newsletter here.
~ Alternatively, if you can spare a brief moment, you can simply reply directly to this email withe a simple “yes pls” or, if you have time, a longer note, letting me know you want to be added to the new list.
I would prefer to hear from you directly—there is something beautiful about that touchpoint—and I will happily add your name to the ledger manually, with deep love and gratitude.
As always, I feel a profound appreciation for your presence in this little slice of the universe, and for the way you participate so wholeheartedly with your own dreams, thoughts, and ideas. This community is everything my younger self once dreamed of finding.
Chronically earnest & typed from the floor of my bedroom,
Vienda