The Riddle at 3 AM

The spinach in her desk salad had wilted into something resembling surrender, much like Elena herself. At 2:47 AM, the office's fluorescent hum was the only company she kept. Another deadline loomed, another quarter to close, another year of her life exchanged for a corner office and a view of the city's financial district.

She'd been running from something for years—maybe from herself, maybe from the question her mother had asked three years ago on her deathbed: Are you happy, mija? The question sat in her chest like a stone.

Lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating the rain streaking her 28th-floor window. The storm outside matched the one inside her gut. She opened the spreadsheet she'd been staring at for hours, numbers blurring into meaningless patterns.

That's when she saw it: the sphinx screensaver she'd installed after that disastrous trip to Cairo—the one where she'd realized she didn't know who she was anymore. The mythical creature's riddle echoed in her mind: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?

The answer was man, but the real question was simpler, more terrifying: What happens when you forget how to walk at all?

Her phone buzzed. A message from David, the analyst she'd been sleeping with for six months—secretly, desperately, like everything else in her carefully compartmentalized life.

"You coming over?"

She stared at the words. David was twenty-six, idealistic, still believed in things like "meaning" and "purpose." He'd asked her once what she dreamed about, and she'd realized with cold horror that she'd stopped dreaming altogether.

Another flash of lightning. In that split second illumination, she saw everything: the stack of unopened vacation requests, the untouched novel on her nightstand, the years she'd spent solving everyone else's riddles but her own.

The sphinx hadn't asked for the correct answer. It had asked for the true one.

Elena stood up, closed her laptop, and walked to the window. The city below churned with possibility. She was thirty-eight, exhausted, and finally, finally ready to begin.