The Pharmacist's Riddle

Working the night shift at CVS, Maya had watched her **hair** transform from chestnut to something closer to steel wool. The fluorescent lights accelerated everything — aging, despair, the slow erosion of dreams. She pressed a bottle of generic **vitamin** D across the counter to the man in the expensive suit.

"You're not getting enough sun," she said, the words automatic. "Living in that office tower, I bet."

The man laughed, bitter as expired medication. "The sphinx, they call me. I sit at the top of the glass pyramid, riddling people out of their livelihoods." His eyes met hers — tired, intelligent, lonely. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"

"A person," Maya said. "From crawling to walking to leaning on a cane. That's the classic answer."

"The answer's 'someone who's forgotten how to live before they started dying.'" He slid a business card across the counter. Security executive. Same building where her ex worked.

Three weeks later, she found herself in his office — thirty floors up, the city sprawling like open wounds beneath them. Daniel's hands traced the gray at her temples. "You know why the sphinx couldn't solve its own riddle?"

"Why?"

"Because wisdom is always blind to itself." His fingers found the **vitamin** bottle in her purse. "You prescribed me something for light deficiency. I think you're the one who's been living in the dark."

The first kiss tasted like coffee and desperate second chances. But Maya pulled away. "I can't be your salvation. That's not what pharmacists do."

"I don't need salvation." Daniel's voice dropped. "I need someone who sees the difference between surviving and being alive."

She chose him anyway. Some riddles answer themselves.