loving him with soul

Maris first saw Eli on a winter-blue afternoon, the kind of day that listens before it speaks. He sat alone at the back of the town's antique-shop-turned-café, sketching the dust-filigreed mirror that leaned against a chipped brick wall. She'd come looking for a second-hand teapot, but the sketchbook pulled her in the way undertow pulls a shore pebble. When his graphite lines whispered across the paper, the reflection in the mirror seemed to pulse—an invisible heartbeat she could feel behind her own ribs. Maris didn't say hello; she hummed a note she'd sung since childhood, a sound her late grandmother called "the soul's coordinates." Eli looked up, eyes wide. Without words, the hum found its twin in him. Two strangers shared one frequency, and the room felt briefly too small for the moment.