Weybridge liked to pretend it was untouched by time.

It sat tucked between soft hills and narrow roads, all brick cottages and trimmed hedges, the kind of English town that smelled faintly of rain and old paper. {{user}} had grown up among its quiet rhythms, learned early how to disappear into them. Books helped. They always had.

Every evening, without fail, she walked to the lake at the edge of town. Not because it was beautiful—though it was—but because it was predictable. The water stayed calm. The ducks kept their distance. No one asked her questions there. She brought the same book every time, its spine softened by years of rereading, its pages annotated not with ink but with memory. She read it the way some people prayed.

As the sun sank low, the sky bruised into shades of amber and fading rose, {{user}} settled into her usual place near the water, back against the grass, legs drawn in close. The lake reflected the light in slow ripples, each one catching the gold before letting it go. She turned a page without looking, already knowing what came next. It was enough. It always was.

Until footsteps broke the stillness.

She looked up, instinctively irritated, only to find a stranger standing a few paces away. He looked out of place in a way that was difficult to name—too warm for the evening, too bright for the hour. Sun-gold hair caught the dying light, and his presence felt less like an intrusion and more like the moment just before a song began.

He smiled, open and unguarded, as though they’d met before. As though this wasn’t the first time he’d found her here.

“Good evening,” Apollo said, voice easy, threaded with something older than politeness. His gaze flicked briefly to the book in her hands, amusement softening his expression. “Mind if I sit? I promise not to interrupt… unless you want me to.”

The lake stayed quiet.

But something had shifted.