PROSE – 3TC #MM40 & SoCS

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The room softened into mist, and time slipped its tether. He saw only her, standing beneath a net of soft lights, her head bowed, lashes dipped in silver. She looked like a secret the universe had forgotten to keep.

He watched her, hardly breathing. There was a stillness about her, as if even the air itself had fallen into orbit around her glow.

Was she real? Or just a dream stitched out of loneliness and hope? He blinked, but she didn’t vanish.

He let himself linger, caught between wonder and a trembling kind of fear. She was too much—too bright, too distant, too beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with the glitter at her temples or the jewels at her brow.

And him? He was just a man standing in the dark, bones full of small regrets, heart patched with quiet scars.

For a moment, he hesitated, sinking into the pause, that heavy moment when you question if you are enough to even be seen. If you are worthy to stand before something so inexplicably beautiful.

His hands shook at his sides, almost imperceptibly. His voice, he feared, would betray him worse.

He closed his eyes and tried to listen — not to the noise of the room, but to the stubborn, fragile hope still alive inside him.

When he opened them, she was still there. Still breathing. Still real.

He stepped forward, heart battering against the cage of his ribs, and found the smallest, truest word:

“Hi,” he said, almost a prayer.

For half a second, the universe hung suspended. Then —

She lifted her head, and the faintest, brightest smile tugged at her lips.

“Hi,” she answered.

And in that small, electric exchange, the stars seemed to exhale, and the night leaned closer around them.