What the Sphinx Knows

Mia pressed her **palm** against the hotel room window, feeling the Cairo heat radiate through the glass even at midnight. The AC unit had died hours ago, along with whatever was left of her marriage to David.

"We should talk about this," David said from the bed, voice thick with wine and exhaustion.

"There's nothing left to say." She turned to face him. "You're leaving in three days anyway. The **cable** show waits for no one."

David's tech startup had secured funding. He was moving to San Francisco. She was staying in London, or perhaps going back to her parents in Bristol. The particulars didn't matter anymore.

Earlier that day, they'd visited the Great **Sphinx**. Their guide had spoken of riddles and eternal guardians, of secrets kept for millennia. David had made some joke about the nose—how even monuments weren't immune to midlife crises. Mia hadn't laughed.

Now, in the suffocating hotel room, she felt like she was **swimming** through water, every movement heavy and resistant.

"What about Buster?" David asked.

Their **dog**, a terrier mix with anxious eyes and a broken tail, was boarding at home. Buster who'd been with them through seven years of graduate school, three apartments, and one miscarriage that they'd never spoken of again.

"You can't take him," Mia said. "Your building doesn't allow pets."

"I know. I just—" David rubbed his face. "I feel like we're abandoning him."

"We're abandoning each other, David. Buster is collateral damage."

The truth hung between them like smoke. This wasn't about the dog or the job or the carefully constructed narrative they'd fed their friends. It was about the silence that had grown between them like a tumor, slow and malignant, until speaking—really speaking—had become impossible.

Mia looked out the window again. The Sphinx was invisible in the darkness, but she could feel it watching. Some riddles had no answers. Some monuments just weathered away, nose by nose, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the shape of something that had once mattered.

"Get some sleep," she said. "Your flight is early."

David didn't reply. The room hummed with the sound of their separate breaths, two currents in an ocean that had long since pulled them beyond each other's reach.