What the Sphinx Whispers

Emma stared at the amber plastic bottle in her palm — Vitamin D3, 5000 IU. Her daily dose of prescribed sunlight in a country that hadn't seen proper sunshine in three months. Across the kitchen table, Marcus chewed his toast with mechanical precision, eyes fixed on nothing.

"You're doing it again," she said.

"What?" He didn't look up.

"The zombie thing. You've been asleep since you woke up."

Marcus's jaw tightened. A muscle feathered beneath his skin — a fox darting through underbrush, too quick to catch. "I'm tired, Em. The merger's killing me."

"The merger's been killing you for six months."

The television hummed in the living room, cable news bleeding through the walls. Some scandal in Westminster, another minister resigning. It was all background noise to the larger scandal: how two people who once finished each other's sentences now couldn't even start a conversation.

Emma remembered their trip to Egypt five years ago, standing before the Great Sphinx at dawn. Marcus had wrapped his arms around her waist, whispered that the riddle wasn't the problem — the problem was that we stopped asking questions. Now she wondered if he'd ever really meant it, or if it had been another performance in a lifetime of them.

"I met someone," she said. The words hung in the air like smoke.

Marcus finally looked at her. His eyes were ancient, weathered — sphinx-like in their inscrutability. "Did you?"

"No. But I could have. That architect from the Birmingham office. He asked if I wanted to grab coffee. He listens when I speak."

The silence stretched between them, cable-taut and fraying.

"And what did you say?" Marcus asked quietly.

"I said I was married." Emma's voice cracked. "But Marcus, I'm starting to forget what that means when you're not actually here."

He stood up, walked to the window. The street outside was grey, relentless. "Do you remember what I told you at the Sphinx?"

"That we stopped asking questions."

"No." He turned, and for the first time in months, he really looked at her. "I said that the ancient Egyptians believed the soul had five parts, and one of them — the ren — was your name. But it wasn't given by your parents. It was given by the people who loved you enough to truly know you."

Emma felt something crack open inside her chest.

"I've been losing my ren," Marcus continued, "because I haven't been letting anyone know me. Including you."

He crossed the room and took the vitamin bottle from her hand, set it on the table. Then he took her hands in his. They were cold, but his grip was firm.

"Coffee with the architect," he said. "Invite me along. I want to remember how to listen."

Outside, the first real light of morning broke through the clouds. The riddle, Emma realized, had never been about leaving. It was about learning to stay awake.