The day was ending gently.
Not like a curtain falling, more like someone letting go of a hand they had held for a very long time.
Warm light stretched thin across the sky, soft as wool, soft as memory.
Through tall glass windows, the last rays of sunlight found her face — pale hair catching gold like winter catching fire for a moment.
She stood still, as if movement might break the moment.
In her hands rested a silver box.
It was small enough to hold with one arm, but dense enough to feel like a history.
Her thumb brushed over the patterns etched into the metal: spirals, petal-shapes, seven circles no bigger than pearls.
Her touch lingered on each one as if counting silently.
Not to remember, perhaps, but to make certain she hadn't forgotten.
The room behind her glowed with quiet lamps and soft rugs.
The kettle on the counter had long gone cold.
Chairs waited around the table like old friends expecting guests who might arrive late ... or never.
She breathed in slowly.
The air tasted faintly of mint leaves and dust.
Days passed differently here.
Not faster. Not slower.
Just… sideways.
She had watched countless sunrises through this window.
Countless sunsets, too.
Each one gentle.
Each one final in its own small way.
Tonight felt no different.
Yet something in the stillness held shape. Like a page nearly ready to turn.
She looked again at the sky, where orange thinned into rose, then into mauve.
Clouds floated like ash-soft feathers.
Birds crossed the horizon and did not return.
Her fingers curled around the box.
What lay inside remained silent. Dormant as breath before a first word, waiting on a story that had not begun.
She didn't open it.
She didn't need to.
Some things were not to be touched until the moment found them.
A quiet tremor hummed through the floor, so faint it might have been imagination.
She tilted her head, listening.
A whisper of distant sound reached the house walls; not loud, not urgent, but real.
Footsteps?
Echoes?
A world shifting in its sleep?
She did not turn.
Only her eyes softened like someone hearing news they always expected.
"If someone arrives", her thoughts brushed the quiet like fingertips on glass, "may they not fear what waits for them."
A chair creaked somewhere upstairs, though no one had sat in it for…
She no longer counted.
Outside, twilight deepened.
Colors drained into indigo.
The first star blinked awake, trembling like a pulse.
The woman with pale hair did not move from the window.
She held the unopened box against her chest: a secret, a promise, a waiting thing,
and watched the sky fade toward darkness like closing eyes.
The room was silent.
But not empty.
Just waiting.