If you had told Iraaya six months ago that one day she would be sitting in a boardroom of a designer house, flipping through swatches and pitching her own ideas, she would have laughed. Or maybe cried. Or both. But here she was.
The Fusion Couture Project, as Aanya called it, had become the studio's obsession. A blend of old craft and modern form. Hand embroidery on sculptural silhouettes. Traditional motifs on minimalist cuts.
Aanya had trusted Iraaya with the first round of concepts.
"I want your instinct on this," she had said.
"Don't think corporate. Think human. What would you wear? What would your sister wear? What would a bride who can't afford a palace wedding want to feel?"
That last line hit deepest.
Now, as she sat across from two senior designers and a marketing exec, Iraaya's heart raced under her polished blouse. She flipped to her sketches, soft jackets with Kantha- style embroidery, saree-inspired draped dresses with asymmetrical hems, cholis with subtle mirrorwork but modern cuts.
"The idea," she said, voice steady
"is to create pieces that feel both rooted and free. You can wear them at a wedding, but also to dinner. To an opening night. To your own anniversary."
The room was quiet for a beat too long. Then, one of the designers, a man named Jay, leaned forward.
"This is good," he said.
"Strong line work. And very wearable, which is rare in fusion collections." Aanya glanced at Iraaya with a flicker of pride. "Let's prototype three pieces first," she said.
"You'll assist Jay on them." Iraaya nodded, pulse thudding.
When the meeting ended, she hurried to the shelter, ideas already tumbling fast.
Vicky caught her as she was pulling out fabric samples.
"You're a woman on a mission," she teased.
"I can't beli
eve they're letting me assist on this," Iraaya whispered.
Vicky grinned. "I can. You've earned it."
That night, Iraaya barely slept. Her mind spun with fabric weights and thread counts, flashes of stitches against skin, ideas half-formed but tugging at her hands.
By morning, she was back in the studio before most of the lights were even on.
Jay arrived half an hour later, a half-drunk coffee in one hand, nodding when he saw her already laying out muslin.
"No one told you to start this early," he said, amused.
"I couldn't help it," Iraaya replied.
And it was true, her fingers itched to move.
They began with the Kantha jacket first. Jay showed her how to map the pattern over a modern cut, where to let the embroidery breathe and where to hold it back.
"You can't fight the stitch," he said.
"Kantha wants to flow. You let it." Iraaya leaned in close, tracing her finger lightly along one line of running stitch.
Amma's voice echoed somewhere in her: Every thread tells a story. "Don't rush it.
Hours blurred. She basted panels in place, ripped them out again when the balance felt wrong. Jay watched her work, silent but not impatient.
Once, when she hesitated over a shoulder seam, he said quietly
"Trust your eye." That made her hands steadier.
By late afternoon, the jacket was taking shape, rough, unfinished, but right. She stood back and looked at it, breath held.
"Good start," Jay said.
A simple line. But to Iraaya, it landed like a bell rung clean.
They moved to the draped dress next. Iraaya pinned folds to the mannequin, letting the fabric fall, unlearning some of the rigid rules she'd been taught. Jay tilted his head.
"You drape like someone who grew up watching sarees move."
"Maybe I did," Iraaya admitted softly.
"Amma's shop." Jay only nodded.
"Keep going. That memory is worth more than any textbook."
And so she pinned and unpinned, letting the lines shift until the dress no longer looked designed, it looked lived in. By the time the third piece began, the mirror-work choli, her movements were more sure, less afraid of space. Not confident, not yet, but curious. Open. Aanya stopped by late in the evening, arms crossed, watching silently.
"This feels..." she began, then trailed off.
"Rooted. Real."
She looked at Iraaya.
"Good. Keep going"
Those words hummed in Iraaya's chest long after Aanya left.
That night, back at the shelter, Vicky found her sitting cross-legged on her cot, fingers still tracing invisible stitches in the air.
"You didn't even eat, did you?" Vicky said, mock-scolding.
"I forgot," Iraaya said sheepishly.
Vicky handed her a packet of biscuits.
"Eat. Then tell me everything." And so Iraaya did, not all at once, but in bursts, between bites.
About the jacket. The folds. The mirror-work that refused to sit easy until her hands found the right tension.
"You sound... different," Vicky said after a while.
"Like you belong there now." Iraaya shook her head.
"I don't know about belong," she said slowly.
"But... I can see the thread. From there to here. From Amma's shop to Elysian's floor. It's not broken." Vicky smiled.
"Then keep stitching." Later, lying awake beneath her shawl, Iraaya thought of that, the unseen thread pulling through her days.
Taut, fragile, but holding.
Iraaya tucked the biscuit wrapper into her pocket, heart still humming with everything that wasn't said.
When she finally drifted to sleep, it was restless, seams folding into dreams, Amma's voice threading through Jay's, her Manaly's shawl slipping through her fingers.
The next morning at Elysian was a blur. The studio felt
brighter, sharper-edged. The usual flow of swatches and fittings was drowned out by the buzz of internal review day.
Prototype samples would be shown to the design leads at noon. Three pieces. No second chances. Jay arrived looking grim but determined.
"Come," he said.
"We finish." For three hours, they worked wordlessly, in a pocket of time that felt cut off from the rest of the world.
Iraaya stitched the final mirrorwork with shaking hands, not from nervousness, but from the pressure of getting it right.
"Don't fight the stitch," she whispered to herself.
When the clock struck eleven-thirty, Jay gave her a look.
"You ready?" She wasn't.
But she nodded anyway. They carried the garments, jacket, dress, choli, into the glass-walled review room.
Aanya was already there, flipping through notes. Two other design heads sat beside her, unreadable faces in pressed linen. As Jay began laying out the pieces, Iraaya hovered by the door, unsure if she should stay. Aanya caught her eye.
"You worked on these. Stay." That single word.
Stay. As if she belonged in the room. Her throat tightened, but she stepped forward.
Jay spoke first, walking through construction choices, fabric sourcing, embellishment balance. His voice was calm, practiced.
Then one of the design heads, a woman with silver- streaked hair and a gaze that seemed to cut through fabric and bone, leaned forward.
"Who draped the dress?" Jay glanced toward Iraaya.
"She did." Now the woman's eyes were on her.
"You learned that here?" Iraaya swallowed.
"Partly. And... before. In my first shop." A long pause.
Then: "Good hand. Intuitive draping."
No smile. No warmth. But no dismissal either. Aanya's mouth twitched, her version of a grin.
"She has an eye." The review moved on.
Notes were made. Suggestions floated. Jay fielded most of them, but once, when a question about stitch density came up, Aanya turned to Iraaya again.
"Thoughts?"
And somehow, her voice came steady: "It needs space. The fabric is already telling its own story. Too much stitch will fight it."
Another pause. Another assessing glance.
"Agreed," the silver-haired designer said.
When the review ended, the team filed out. Aanya stayed back.
"You did well," she said simply.
"We'll move these forward. And, you'll stay on this line. Officially."
It took a beat for the words to land. When they did, Iraaya's breath caught.
"Thank you," she managed. Aanya's gaze softened, the briefest flicker.
"Don't thank me yet. This is where the work really begins."
Later, back at her table, Iraaya ran her fingers over the Kantha stitches again. Imperfect. Human. Alive. Across the studio, Jay caught her eye and gave a small nod. Respect. Recognition.
And this time, she didn't flinch from it.
That evening at the shelter, Vicky was waiting with two cups of roadside tea.
"You're glowing again," she said, eyes dancing.
"Not glowing," Iraaya replied.
But she couldn't stop the smile that tugged at her mouth. Vicky bumped her shoulder.
"I'll believe you when you stop grinning." This time, Iraaya let herself laugh, low, unguarded, real.
Because today, for the first time, the thread between her old life and this new one hadn't frayed.
It had held.