The Riddle of Us

The hotel pool was empty at 3 AM, which was exactly why Elena found herself **swimming** laps in the obsidian water. The chlorine stung her eyes, matching the burn behind them. She'd left Mark asleep in room 412, his soft snores a reminder of the comfortable silence that had settled between them like dust over the past seven years.

Tomorrow they'd tell everyone at the anniversary brunch that they were happy. They'd say the right words, wear the right smiles. But tonight, in the water's embrace, Elena let herself remember the woman she used to be—the one who asked questions, who demanded answers, who believed love should feel like **lightning** striking.

She rested at the pool's edge, her breath creating small clouds in the cool air. Above her, a replica Egyptian **sphinx** stared down from its niche in the courtyard wall, its stone face frozen in eternal riddle. Some joke from the resort's theme days. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?" The answer was man, but Elena wondered if the better answer was marriage: passion, companionship, dependence.

Mark had wanted children. She hadn't—or at least, she'd needed time. Time had become seven years, and now his silence on the subject felt less like patience and more like surrender. The riddle of them remained unsolved.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

She turned in the water. Mark stood at the pool's edge, robe tied loosely, looking down at her. His expression was unreadable in the pale moonlight.

"No," she said.

"Mind if I join?"

"It's cold."

"I know."

He sank into the water beside her, and for a while they just floated there, side by side, not touching. Then Mark spoke softly: "The answer to the riddle—it's not about legs. It's about how we're always becoming something else."

Elena turned to face him. Water dripped from her lashes. "Are we?"

"I don't want to wait anymore, Elena. For anything. But I also don't want to become something else without you."

The storm broke then. **Lightning** fractured the sky, illuminating the courtyard, the **sphinx**, Mark's open face. For the first time in years, Elena felt the current between them, electric and alive. She reached for his hand beneath the water's surface.

"Then let's start figuring out the next riddle together," she said.

Somewhere above them, thunder rumbled like approval.