SADOVAYA STREET — AUGUST 2ND, 1932 — 3;47 P.M.

It was a spring evening, one of those that Moscow rarely gifts its citizens, when the sun, already setting, sends its final, slanting rays over the city, gilding windows and softening even the harshest faces in its farewell light. The air was trembling with the first scent of lilacs and petrol.

And there she was.

She appeared from around the corner of Spiridonovka, walking slowly, almost solemnly, as though the world itself had paused to watch her pass. In her hands she carried a bouquet of yellow camellias; rare flowers, startling in their brightness, cruelly beautiful against the somber pavement and the black of her dress. Her eyes, restless and deep, seemed to reflect something not of this world; a sorrow not yet spoken, and a tenderness that could break the hardest heart.

People turned to look at her, though she did not seem to notice. Her step was light, deliberate, but her gaze? It searched the faces that passed, as though seeking something long promised and long denied.

A stray breeze lifted a lock of her hair across her cheek, and she brushed it back with a hand that trembled slightly, revealing a wedding ring that caught the sun for a fleeting instant before sinking back into shadow.

And then, she stopped.

Perhaps it was the way the light struck a face among the crowd, or some invisible thread tugging at the corners of fate. She looked up, and her eyes met {{user}}’s. The street fell away. The noise, the traffic, the voices, all of it dissolved, leaving only that look, that unbearable recognition that comes once in a lifetime, and never again.

Her lips parted slightly, not for words, but for breath, as if the meeting itself had taken it from her. The bouquet tilted in her grasp, and a camellia slipped free, falling silently onto the stones between them.