The Riddle of Survival

Maya stood before the bathroom mirror at 3 AM, her **hair** matted from another night of half-sleep. She'd become something resembling a **zombie** these past three months since David's death—moving through her days on autopilot, answering emails she couldn't remember reading, smiling at colleagues who meant well with their condolences. The living dead, indeed.

Her father's old fedora sat on the counter, David had given it to her as a joke on their third date. "For when you want to feel mysterious," he'd said, plopping the **hat** on her head. Now she wore it everywhere, a ridiculous umbrella against a storm that had already soaked her through.

The corporate retreat had been David's idea. "You need to get out," he'd insisted before the accident. "The cruise stops in Egypt. You can finally see the **sphinx**." She'd booked it—grief counseling disguised as vacation time.

Now she stood on the sun-baked sand, the ancient stone creature watching her with its broken face. Tourists snapped photos, children climbed its paws. The riddle it posed wasn't about what walked on four legs then two then three. The riddle was how to keep walking when your own four legs had been cut out from under you.

A woman beside her was crying. "It's smaller than I imagined," she said.

Maya touched the brim of her hat. "Most things are."

She remembered David's voice the last time they'd spoken, drunk-dialing from a business trip: "You're too young to be this serious, May. You need to learn to be selfish again."

The sphinx had survived millennia of sandstorms, its face eroded but its body enduring. Maybe that was the answer—you could lose pieces of yourself and remain. You could be broken and still be whole.

Maya took off the hat, letting the desert wind tangle her hair for the first time in months. She booked a flight home that afternoon. The zombie would keep walking, but she'd stop wearing the dead man's clothes.