#shortstory

The bus shelter smelled like wet cardboard and someone's spilled energy drink. I'd been waiting eleven minutes—not ten, not fifteen—because I kept checking my phone, as if the number 42 would materialize faster if I refreshed the transit app one more time. A woman beside me was reading a paperback with a creased spine, the kind of damage that comes from being loved too hard. I caught a glimpse of the title:

The Hands We Hold

. She turned a page without looking up, and I wondered what scene she was living in while I was stuck in mine.

There was a boy who lived on a hill where nothing grew but rocks. Every morning he'd walk down to the town below, where the bakery smelled of butter and yeast and the shopkeeper's son played violin badly through an open window. The boy never spoke to anyone. He'd buy bread, a single apple, and walk back up.

One afternoon he found a seed lodged between two stones near his house. He didn't know what kind. He watered it anyway, carrying buckets from the well a half-mile down. Weeks passed. Nothing happened. He kept watering.

A girl from the town followed him one day. She'd seen him every morning for years, always silent, always alone. She asked why he climbed all the way up here when there were empty houses below. He said, "The quiet is different up here. It doesn't press on you."