The Riddle at Sunset

The Great Sphinx did not answer. It had sat with that inscrutable smile for five thousand years, watching empires rise and crumble, and it certainly wasn't going to start dispensing marital advice now.

Marcus pressed another **vitamin** D tablet into Elena's palm. Their doctor had warned them about deficiency, about how sometimes you can stand in the desert sun and still not absorb what you need to survive.

"You don't have to keep doing that," she said, not meeting his eyes. The wind whipped her scarf across her face—a flash of **orange** silk against the relentless beige of the Sahara. It was the same scarf she'd worn at their wedding, chosen because it reminded her of Tuscan sunsets, of optimism, of a life they hadn't yet lived.

"I know." He dropped the bottle into his backpack. The plastic clink sounded unnecessarily loud.

Below them, the bus waited. Other tourists were already boarding, laughing, comparing photos, complaining about the heat. They'd come here for their tenth anniversary, trying to recapture something—connection, maybe, or at least the memory of it. But three weeks ago, Elena had started sleeping in the guest room. Two weeks ago, she'd stopped wearing her ring.

"The riddle," she said suddenly, gesturing toward the limestone creature. "You know what it asks? What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening."

"Man," Marcus said. "We crawl, we walk, we stumble."

"No." She turned to him finally, and the **water** in her eyes caught the dying light. "The answer is time. And we're at the third stage, Marcus. We're stumbling, and I don't think either of us knows how to hold each other up anymore."

He reached for her hand, instinct overriding good sense. She didn't pull away—not exactly. But she didn't close her fingers around his either.

The Sphinx continued its eternal vigil, enigmatic and patient. Some secrets it kept. Some, it simply watched as people discovered them for themselves.

"I'll take a different flight back," she said softly.

"Okay."

As the bus door hissed open, the orange silk disappeared into the crowd, and he understood finally that some riddles have answers you can live with, while others simply break you in ways no supplement can fix.