The Riddle in Her Pocket

Maya found the bottle of prenatal vitamins in her bathroom cabinet, expired by three years. She'd bought them during the six months she thought she might need them—the six months with Daniel, before he decided he wasn't ready for children, or marriage, or apparently, anything resembling commitment.

Now she stood in the Egyptian wing of the museum, where she worked as a junior curator, staring at the Great Sphinx of Tanis. The granite creature was missing its nose, worn smooth by three thousand years of people touching it for luck. Maya ran her thumb over the smooth screen of her iPhone, where Daniel's last message still glowed: *i think we need different things.*

"It's a riddle," said Dr. Aris, appearing beside her. He was fifty, silver-haired, permanently rumpled, and the only person who knew about the vitamins Maya had pretended to throw away. "The sphinx. The Greeks thought it represented wisdom. But the Egyptians? They saw it as protection. A guardian of knowledge."

"Knowledge doesn't feel very protective," Maya said. "It feels like a weapon."

Aris smiled sadly. "In my divorce, I took a vitamin D supplement every morning. Doctor's orders. But I kept thinking: here I am, trying to strengthen my bones, while my marriage was collapsing around me. The body persists, even when the heart breaks."

Maya looked at the sphinx again—lion body, human head, creature of thresholds, of liminal spaces. Of questions asked and answered, or asked and never answered. The riddle wasn't the point. The riddle was that we kept asking, kept touching the worn stone, kept hoping that this time, the answer would be different.

Her phone buzzed. Daniel again. *can we talk?*

Maya pressed her thumb to the sphinx's missing nose, felt the cool granite beneath her skin. Some questions didn't need answers. Some things were meant to remain mysteries. She deleted the message, then opened her shopping app and ordered a new bottle of vitamins—not prenatal ones, just regular. Something for herself.

"Dr. Aris?" she said. "Would you like to get coffee?"

The older man's eyes crinkled. "I was hoping you'd ask."

The sphinx watched them go, silent enigma, guardian of nothing and everything. Outside, the city hummed with possibility.