The Riddle in the Mirror

The vitamin D sat on his nightstand, a small yellow promise he'd stopped believing in months ago. At forty-two, Elias understood that no supplement could reverse what the mirror showed him each morning: the receding hairline, the creases around eyes that had seen too many stadium lights, the quiet erosion of a man who'd once been someone.

"You coming?" Clara called from the hallway. "The reservation's at seven."

The baseball glove in his closet still smelled of leather and summer afternoons, though it had been three years since his last professional pitch. Three years since his shoulder had whispered enough. The glove was buried beneath old sweaters now, like a secret he kept from himself.

They were meeting friends at the new exhibit downtown — Egyptian artifacts, ancient riddles, stone faces that had survived millennia. What better place for a man whose own face felt increasingly foreign?

The museum was hushed, reverent. Clara moved between displays with effortless grace, her dark hair catching the low light. She'd stayed through the surgeries, the bitterness, the months when he couldn't look at himself. She never mentioned the vitamins, never asked about the glove.

"Look at this one," she said softly.

The sphinx stared back with calcified eyes, its human face worn smooth by time, its lion body still powerful. A question carved in stone: What walks on four legs, then two, then three? The answer had always seemed so simple — until now.

"The riddle," Elias said, surprised by the thickness in his throat. "About aging."

Clara's hand found his. "We all change shape."

He looked at his reflection in the glass case: hair thinning, shoulders stooped, body betraying him. Yet Clara stood beside him, steady as breath. The sphinx's secret wasn't the answer — it was that the question kept changing. Four legs, two legs, three legs. And then what?

Then love. Then you let someone else carry the cane.

The vitamin bottle went in the trash that night. The glove stayed buried. Some sphinxes didn't need solving — only witnessing.