Riddle in the Afterlight

Maya stood before the glass case at 11:47 PM, the Egyptian wing silent except for the distant hum of HVAC. Her iPhone glowed in her hand — three new messages from David, each one more final than the last. *I think we need different things. I'm sorry. I've been staying with Sarah for two weeks.*

She unlocked the phone anyway, thumb hovering over his name, like pressing it might reverse time.

Behind the glass, the granite sphinx watched her with its broken face. Half its lion body remained, the other half lost to centuries. It had outlasted dynasties, wars, the slow crumble of empires. Now it watched Maya's own empire collapse in 280 pixels of blue light.

The security guard, Elena, found her there. "Again?"

Maya slipped the phone into her pocket. "He finally said it."

Elena opened her bag, revealing an orange she'd clearly brought from home. She peeled it, the citrus scent cutting through the museum's preserved stillness. "My ex left me for a yoga instructor. Two years later, I found her Instagram. She's selling pyramid schemes now. Literally." She offered a segment.

Maya took it. The juice hit her tongue — sharp, bright, undeniably real. "What's the riddle?" she asked, nodding toward the sphinx. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?"

"Man," Elena said. "But maybe that's wrong. Maybe it's: what survives when everything else is stripped away?" She tapped the glass. "This thing. Your memories. The parts of yourself that don't need someone else's approval to exist."

Maya's phone vibrated. David again: *Can we talk?*

She finished the orange segment, licked the juice from her thumb. Outside, the city hummed with millions of people making mistakes, falling in love, falling apart. The sphinx had seen them all.

"No," Maya typed, and pressed send with a steady hand. "We can't."