'Ashes of silence'

📖 Chapter 1: The MeetingThe rain fell with a quiet persistence, tracing delicate rivulets down the windows of the small café on Westbridge Street. Aurelia Vale pulled her coat closer, as though the fabric could shield her from both weather and memory. She chose the table by the window—the same one she had chosen for weeks—where the muffled hum of the city outside felt distant, almost unreal.Her gloves were removed slowly, deliberately, and she let her hands rest on the worn tabletop. Her notebook remained in her bag, untouched. Words had been stubbornly absent for days, leaving her thoughts to circle like restless birds.The bell above the door chimed. Footsteps approached, steady, unhurried. A man’s voice followed, low and deliberate, placing an order. Something about it unsettled her—not in a threatening way, but in the way one might be unsettled by a storm approaching silently.She looked up.He stood a few steps away, damp from the rain, holding a black umbrella at his side. Dark hair clung slightly to his forehead, and his eyes—sharp, cautious, and burdened—found hers for a moment that stretched too long. Then he looked away.Aurelia exhaled. The breath had been held unknowingly, and its release left her startled.Minutes passed. The café remained quiet, the clink of cups and soft murmurs around them barely touching the stillness between. Then he moved to the empty chair opposite her.“You look like someone waiting for something that never comes,” he said, his tone neither gentle nor harsh.“I beg your pardon?”His gaze flicked toward her untouched coffee. “It’s grown cold.”Aurelia stared. He was right.“I wasn’t waiting,” she said, unsure if she was telling the truth.“Neither was I.”She studied him properly this time. There was something in the line of his jaw, in the quiet storm of his posture, that spoke of unspoken histories.“Do you often join strangers uninvited?” she asked.“Only when they look lonelier than they admit,” he replied, a trace of humor brushing the corners of his lips.She should have told him to leave.She did not.Instead, she asked softly, “What’s your name?”“Elias.”“Aurelia.”Outside, the rain deepened. Somewhere between that first exchange and the fragile silence that followed, two histories crossed paths—though neither yet understood the cost.