Waning wisps of moonlight fell over the Danube like a shattered mirror. Peeking through the clouds to cover the water’s surface, coated and hued in the ethereal gaze of a pregnant, early October sky.
It’s a hope for what could’ve been, he pondered, idly twisting his spoon against the bottom of his coffee cup.
Happenstance returned him here, or so he thought. Perhaps there had always been some longing beneath his breast, the ache to return to where the pestilence of war hadn’t fallen.
In some ways, for that very reason, Hungary itself was its own sort of ethereal. Maybe that’s why the ache always urged him back.
“What did you think of the Balaton?” She asked from beside him, the steam from her own cup rising skywards.
He spared her a haphazard glance to ensure she was real, “I’ve never been.” He answers awkwardly, and, in lieu of words yet to come, he raises his cup and takes a scalding sip.
Her expression turned contemplative for a moment as the dull whispers of the street below seemed far too loud for the hour.
“Oh,” she mumbled before the strength to her words returned. “We could always see it today, if you’re free that is?”
“I’d like that,” he nods. “I hope I’m not taking you away from anything too important.”
“Work will hold for a day,” she brushed off with the smallest smirk. “I don’t think there’s anything half as terrible as missing the view—I’ll be sure they understand that.”
His gaze returned to the river, “If you’re sure,” he offered quietly.
“Quite,” she returns.
For just a moment, there was that naive piece of hope. The sort that stretched the future—all the ‘could be’s’ and wishes—into dried ink. In that future, he was on the banks of the Balaton; he was walking along the river—he was living the life he’d so desperately yearned for.
And it was all with her.
But clarity returned with time as they sipped on their coffee, the aching chasm that was these frantic days of passion in foreign hotels split open again. The future was, as it had always been, lemon and salt in an old wound.
And came and went in the bittersweet way the futures do.
But there was comfort in the now, in seizing the day.
“The Balaton,” he weighed the thought with a soft smile. “I think I’d enjoy that.”
She breathes a happy sigh of relief. “Well, I think that sounds perfect.”
No matter how many different scenes unfolded before him, foreign countries or sights that passed him by, he had these small comforts in their fleeting moments of happiness.
It was that thought that brought his eyes back to the rolling river and rising sun that had inexplicably lost a glimmer of their lustre when his gaze drifted mindlessly back to her and ran an involuntary comparison.
It was that thought that ushered in the others.
Perhaps the river was the ache that bought him back.
Or, perhaps it was her.