Before the war learned how to speak, the world was quiet enough to make promises.
They stood by the river where the city thinned into reeds and sky, where the water carried reflections more honestly than people ever could. The afternoon smelled of bread and damp stone. Bells rang somewhere distant, not for warning—only for time.
He traced circles on her wrist with his thumb, absentminded and tender, as if memorizing a language he feared he might forget.
"When this is over," he said, because everyone said it that way, when, never if. "We'll leave the city. Somewhere smaller. Somewhere the war doesn't know our names."
She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Wars learn everything eventually."
"Then we'll be faster," he replied.
They planned their future like children drawing castles in the dirt—fragile, earnest, radiant. A house with white shutters. A fig tree in the yard. Arguments about nothing important. She teased him for wanting too many books. He teased her for believing the river listened when she spoke.
Neither of them noticed the sky darkening at the edges.
When the summons came, it arrived clean and folded, sealed with authority and indifference. He read it twice. She did not need to ask what it said.
"I'll come back," he told her.
She did not cry. Crying felt like a superstition, like tempting fate to prove itself cruel.
He kissed her forehead, then her mouth, then lingered as if committing the moment to something deeper than memory. When he turned away, she watched his back until it disappeared into the street, certain—certain—this was not the last time she would see him.
The river kept flowing.