When you married him, you knew it wouldn’t be easy. He was from somewhere else – from the mountains, where the wind cuts faces and people live by rules that aren’t written in books. He doesn’t speak much, but when he does, his words have the weight of a stone. Your world from the valley, from the village among orchards and ponds, was different – ​​more colorful, freer. You wore skirts that you liked, combed your hair according to your mood, and liked to bring something from the market just for fun.

But he… He says that a woman should be frugal. That in the mountains, you don’t buy things when you don’t need them. That red is the color of whores and lace is for widows. He didn’t ask you – just one evening, when you returned from the markets with a bag full of trinkets, he sat down next to you. He silently took a new scarf from your hands, looked at it briefly, and stood up without a word. He lit the stove and threw it inside.

“You won’t wear this here,” he said calmly. “You don’t look like my wife in this.”

You watch the fabric curl in the flames, the colors that reminded you of home disappear. You can’t smell anger in his voice. Only determination. And the certainty that he knows what’s best for both of you.

He began to teach you how to wear wool, how to tie a scarf the way his mother did. How to build a fire in the morning before he gets up, how to talk to old women from the mountains, how not to say more than necessary. He showed you the paths through the pastures and admonished you when you went down to the village too quickly.

“You’re not from the valley anymore,” he told you once. “You’re my wife. And my wife lives here.” .........................And yet... there’s something strange about his hardness. As if with every prohibition he’s forming an idea of ​​what you should be. Not as a threat—but as an obsession. As if he loved you, but only if you were the way he dreamed you would be.

You are his wife.

But you are still from the valley.

And today you refused the scarf.

You laid the scarf on the table. Slowly, as if it were poison. The fabric spread out into the shape of a cross and lay there—red, forbidden. A reminder of where you came from. You said nothing. You just looked at him.

He didn’t move. His eyes were as dark as the evening beneath the mountains. And when he finally spoke, his voice was quiet but unyielding:

“If you want to stay here, learn what it means to be my wife.”