The gallery was quieter than usual that morning.
Golden sunlight spilled through the glass ceiling, dust motes floating like ghosts suspended in time. Elara stood before her unfinished canvas, brush hovering in her hand, heart somewhere far from the smell of paint and turpentine.
She had painted a thousand sunrises but never one that felt alive.
Adrian's voice echoed in her memory, low and warm:
"You can't paint light unless you've been in the dark, Elara."
She smiled faintly. That was him always finding poetry in pain.
Since their meeting three weeks ago, her world had subtly changed. The days were still gray, but now they meant something. She painted with a pulse again, every brushstroke carrying a question she couldn't name. What was it about him that quiet man with tired eyes and a smile that felt like confession?
Her phone buzzed.
A text from Adrian:
"Meet me at the bridge. 5 p.m. Don't bring your camera this time."
The message was simple, but it made her chest tighten.
That bridge the old one across the Thames had been their silent sanctuary. The place where they first talked about the stars reflected in the river, and how every reflection is just light trying to return home.
At five, she found him there.
The sky was an overcast blue, the kind of sky that holds its breath before rain. Adrian leaned on the railing, his hair tousled by the wind, eyes distant like he was listening to something she couldn't hear.
"Elara," he said softly, turning to her. "Do you ever think about what we'll leave behind? When all this" he gestured vaguely at the city skyline "is gone?"
She hesitated. "I try not to."
"Maybe you should." He smiled sadly. "Artists and dreamers… we burn too bright. We don't last long, but we make others see."
She didn't understand then not fully. But she felt it: that quiet ache in his words.
The kind that comes when someone is already halfway gone.
He reached out, brushing a streak of paint from her wrist. "You have gold on you," he whispered.
She laughed nervously. "It never comes off."
"Good," he said. "Then I'll always find you."
For a long while, they stood in silence the kind that said everything words could not. The wind carried the scent of rain, and the city began to blur behind mist.
In that moment, London felt infinite, and so did they.
But somewhere in that infinity, a clock was ticking counting down to the day one of them would disappear.
Elara watched as Adrian's reflection shimmered on the river's surface, broken by every ripple of water that caught the dying light. The world around them seemed to fade the sound of traffic, the chatter of strangers all lost beneath the hum of something heavier, quieter, almost sacred.
"Adrian…" she began, her voice trembling just slightly. "When you said we burn too bright… what did you mean?"
He didn't answer at first. Instead, he took a deep breath, eyes fixed on the horizon. The clouds had parted just enough to let a thin ray of sunlight pass through a scar of gold on a silver sky.
"I meant," he finally said, "some of us aren't meant to stay. We come into someone's life, set it on fire… and then the wind takes us away."
Her throat tightened. "Don't talk like that."
He smiled, the kind of smile that hides too many goodbyes. "I'm only being honest. My time here isn't infinite, Elara."
She stepped closer, the space between them shrinking until their shadows merged into one. "Then let me paint you before you fade."
He turned, eyes catching hers, a storm in the calm. "If you paint me," he whispered, "paint me as light, not as loss."
The wind lifted her hair as the first raindrops fell gentle, deliberate, like the sky was crying for them. Adrian tilted his face upward, letting the rain touch him, and for a moment, he looked free untethered, unafraid.
"Promise me something," he said, still staring at the clouds.
"Anything," she replied.
"When I'm gone, don't look for me in the dark. Look for me in color in gold, in red, in every horizon you paint."
Her heart cracked open, silent and raw.
"Then don't go where I can't follow."
He lowered his gaze, a shadow passing through his expression. "Some things… even love can't follow."
The rain grew heavier, washing the city in silver. Elara stood still, tears mingling with the storm, realizing that love wasn't always about staying. Sometimes, it was about remembering even when the person became part of the light.
The rain softened, leaving behind the scent of wet stone and iron. The city glowed faintly beneath the streetlamps amber light reflecting off puddles, glimmering like broken glass.
Elara and Adrian walked in silence through the narrow streets of Southbank. Their shoulders brushed once, then again, until the quiet between them felt louder than words.
He stopped before a gallery window, where paintings hung in quiet rows. One of them a landscape of a crimson sky over the sea caught his attention.
"That one," he said softly, "looks like something you'd paint."
Elara followed his gaze. "Maybe because
I already have a hundred times in my head."
He smiled faintly, his reflection in the glass almost merging with hers. "You see the world the way I wish I could. Not for what it is, but for what it feels like."
"And how does it feel to you?" she asked.
Adrian's answer came like the echo of a sigh. "Like something I'm always about to lose."
They stood there, two silhouettes framed by the rain-drenched glass, as if the world beyond existed only to capture that fleeting stillness.
When he finally spoke again, his tone had changed lower, steadier, the kind of voice people use when they're building walls out of sorrow.
"I got the results back, Elara," he said.
She turned to him, confusion flickering across her features. "Results?"
"From the hospital," he continued. "It's spreading faster than they thought."
The world seemed to tilt. For a moment, even the rain forgot to fall.
"You said it was under control," she whispered.
Adrian tried to smile, but it faltered halfway. "I said that because I wanted to believe it. Because I didn't want you to look at me like you're looking now."
Her fingers trembled. She reached for him hesitant, desperate but he stepped back.
"Don't," he said quietly. "If you touch me now, I'll forget how to let you go."
Tears blurred her vision, the city around them turning into streaks of gold and gray. "You can't ask me to stay away, not after everything."
Adrian shook his head, water dripping from his hair, his eyes red not from the rain but from the weight of unspoken things.
"I'm asking you to remember me while I'm still alive in your heart not as a ghost haunting your art."
Elara swallowed hard. "Then you don't understand, Adrian. You already are my art."
For a long time, neither moved. The rain began again, slow and patient, painting halos around the streetlights.
When she finally looked at him, she memorized everything the line of his jaw, the sadness in his half-smile, the way the light caught his eyes like reflections of a dying sun.
"When the time comes," she said, her voice breaking, "I'll paint the horizon red."
He exhaled, a sound that was almost a sob. "Then I'll meet you there."
And under the endless rain of London, two souls made a promise that neither heaven nor time could keep the kind of promise that doesn't fade when love ends, but lingers, bleeding softly into eternity.