A Mystery in the Sands of Time

The first time I saw her, she was sitting on the bus. She wasn't sitting next to anyone. She had a book propped up on her knees, but it wasn't open. Her head was down and her hair covered her face like a curtain. I wasn't looking at anyone else anyway: she was the only person on the bus.

When I got off, she got off too. The sun was just starting to set. It'd been a long day at work; I couldn't wait to get home. I walked faster than usual, but not so fast that people would notice me hurrying. I didn't want to look like an idiot. But then again, if I walked too slow, someone might think I was waiting for the bus and not have realized yet that *I'd* gotten off it.

As we stepped onto the platform, she turned her head towards me and smiled. Our eyes met for a second. In that second, she looked so happy. Like nothing ever could make her sad again.

And then the moment was over and she kept walking in front of me while I kept following behind her. We were both heading home from work, but in opposite directions: one of us lived near the station where the buses exited and one of us lived near the station where they entered; she lived on the west side of town and I lived near the east side; she seemed tired and restless while I felt tired and relaxed. She looked elegant while I looked plain; she had curves and smooth skin while my body was more angular and dry; she smelled nice while my breath smelled sour from eating too much candy earlier in the day; there was a man behind me who whistled as we walked past him, but there weren't any men around her or behind me at all as if God had placed her there just for me to see when no one else could see at all even though he obviously could see; it was so strange that i noticed all of these things about her as if i'd never seen anyone walking down this street before even though it's so familiar that when i close my eyes i can smell it with my nose closed instead of opening them in order to smell it with my eyes open; what kind of person notices something like that? What kind of person thinks about how different people smell? What kind of person noticed how empty this street is? What kind of person sees things clearly at night? Why am i thinking about these kinds of things? Why am i thinking about anything at all? Why am i even here?

"Hey!" came a voice from behind me suddenly in a way that made me jump out of my reverie and start running immediately without knowing why or where because running suddenly seemed like the only thing to do right then even though i'm not athletic and i don't run for exercise or anything like that because i hate running so much that whenever i have to run somewhere or do any kind of physical activity i wish nothing more than to be able to have some sort of superpower that allowed me to fly through space instead because flying would be better than running in every way imaginable but when you're flying you can still hardly see anything below you because your head is always pointed upwards so you can keep flying so there's really no point in having x-ray vision or anything like that although flying would be cool too because you could fly into outer space without any special powers other than being able to fly which is pretty much every kid's dream except maybe landing safely after crashing into something hard enough and hard enough times until you're dead but hell if you're already dead then what does it matter how many times exactly you die after you're already dead which means death doesn't exist which means maybe life doesn't exist either and all we are is light bouncing around inside our own heads which makes sense because if we were actually alive then why aren't we seeing anything right now especially since we're standing on a platform which isn't a solid surface unless the train has already arrived which means we should start moving soon which means getting ready to jump off this platform should be way easier than staying still on this platform no matter how scared you are which is why running away from direct danger makes sense even when you don't know what exactly "direct danger" is--

---

"What happened?" asked Samer, wiping his eyes furiously with one hand as he took another swig from his water bottle with the other hand. "Why did you stop talking?"

"You fell asleep," said Alia quietly, chuckling slightly under her breath as she stared off into space dreamily, remembering past events fondly. "You fell asleep halfway through our last trip."