The Sculptor's Riddle

Elena adjusted her battered felt **hat**, pulling the brim low against the studio's fluorescent glare. Three months since Marcus left, and she'd completed nothing but this: a half-carved **sphinx** that stared back with granite eyes, mocking her silence.

'This is **bull**,' she muttered, chisel slipping from grease-stained fingers. Not the marble – Marcus's parting line: 'You're too consumed, El. Can't compete with stone.'

Her phone buzzed. Another LinkedIn rejection. Corporate marketing positions for failed artists. She swallowed a **vitamin** D supplement with lukewarm coffee, the sunlight deprivation of studio living catching up with her bone-deep exhaustion.

Outside, commuters streamed past – bodies moving forward while minds remained elsewhere. **Zombie** commuters, her brother called them. But weren't they just people who'd figured out how to keep going when the making stopped making sense?

The sphinx's riddle wasn't eternal life. It was simpler: what do you create when you've forgotten how to begin?

Elena pressed her palm against the rough stone. Not perfect. Not ready. But existing, stubbornly, in the half-light.

'Tomorrow,' she whispered. 'Tomorrow I'll carve your mouth.'

The sphinx said nothing. But for the first time in months, the silence felt like conversation, not accusation.