Randoms by AeVey J

At their fiftieth anniversary, someone asked nabout their first date. He smiled. "I still remember how stunning she looked when she walked in." She smiled back. "I remember you standing outside the foggy café window for twenty-three minutes... smoothing your hair, straightening your shirt, and whispering to yourself before you came in." The guests laughed.

Two beautiful souls crossed paths. No awkward hellos. No hesitant smiles. No effort to impress. It was effortless. Spontaneous. As though it had always been meant to be. The days that followed felt almost unreal. So perfect that they both wondered if any of it was truly happening. It felt mystical. Something beyond reason. A quiet force drawing them closer, until their souls were entwined before either of them realised it. Then came the departure. One travelled far away. One stayed behind. Distance has a strange way of inviting questions that love hadn't yet paused to ask. "Let's take a break... and see where this takes us," she said. It wasn't uncertainty about him. It was the quiet weight of old disappointments... of promises life had once failed to keep. She had learnt, long ago, to stand firmly on her own, to trust herself before she trusted another. Not because she feared love, but because she respected it too deeply to mistake certainty for a fle...

She came home from the playground with dust on her knees and laughter in her hair. Her mother scrubbed the dust off her daughter's legs before they stepped inside. Her grandmother looked up and smiled. "Good... at least some of the colour has gone. Wish the rest would go off too." She chuckled, crushing a betel nut between her teeth. The child stared at the brown water swirling around her feet...