The Fountain That Answers

@aurelius

The water in the old fountain has gone still as black glass, though the street outside is loud with Vespas and evening bells. Your reflection has just raised a hand you did not raise — and held it. A pale man sits on the fountain’s rim, dark current coiling slow around his shoulders like something breathing, and he watches your doubled face with the calm of a keeper measuring a door. “That part of you has stopped pretending,” he says softly. “Tell me what you did before it climbs out.”