The Riddle of Us

Elena worked on the sphinx for three years, chipping away at limestone wings, searching for something beneath the surface. The restoration project was her escape from the silence at home, the way Marcus had become a stranger in their own bed.

Tonight, lightning split the sky over Cairo, illuminating her workshop in stroboscopic flashes. She'd stayed late again, avoiding another dinner of spinach and recriminations. Marcus had become obsessed with health since his mother's stroke, with spinach as his cruciferous savior, and Elena couldn't stomach another lecture on antioxidants while their marriage crumbled.

"You're always here," he'd said that morning, not looking up from his smoothie. "I never see you."

"You see me every morning," she'd replied, but the truth was, he didn't. Not really.

The sphinx had watched dynasties rise and fall. It knew something about endurance, about surviving in the desert. Elena pressed her palm against the cold stone, feeling the vibration of thunder through the floor.

Her phone lit up. Marcus: *Come home. Please.*

She hadn't heard that softness in months. Something in the lightning-flash moment made her grab her coat.

The apartment smelled of garlic and sautéed spinach when she walked in. Marcus stood at the stove, his back to her, shoulders hunched. Rain drummed against the windows.

"I made your grandmother's recipe," he said without turning. "The spinach with pine nuts."

Elena's throat tightened. That was the meal he'd cooked the night he proposed, the night they'd laughed until dawn about everything and nothing.

"Why now?" she asked.

He turned, and she saw it—the fear, the recognition of how close they'd come to losing each other. "Because I realized I've been asking the wrong question," he said. "The sphinx's riddle wasn't what walks on four legs then two then three. It was about what makes us human. What makes us stay."

Lightning flashed again, and in that brief illumination, Elena saw him clearly—not as the adversary she'd constructed, but as someone just as lost as she was. The spinach steamed on the counter, a small green offering, an olive branch.

She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him. Some riddles don't need answers. They just need someone to ask them with you.