Separate

PART ONE: ULTIMATUM

I. Dara

FOURTEEN DAYS. Dara read the number for the twentieth time before folding the visa letter and putting it back in the same place, along the same crease, as if the gesture might keep something intact.

Outside, Night Café was quiet as usual. Eight tables, only two occupied, and the clock showed four in the afternoon. Five years ago, at this hour, she couldn't have found an empty seat. Now she wiped tables that were already clean because her hands needed something to do.

The cloth moved in circles. Wet, dry, wet again. Dara realized she had been wiping the same spot for too long.

In the corner of the room, cardboard boxes were stacked like an unfinished admission. She had started packing three days ago, slowly, one thing at a time, as though moving too quickly might break something.

The recipe books first. The heaviest things. The least important. Then the spare cups she never used.

On the third day, she stopped at the photograph from the 2019 river festival. It was still hanging on the wall. The cloth stayed in her hand, half-folded, as though she had forgotten what it was for.

She knew the photograph was behind her in the same way she knew Tomas would come tonight and that there were no words sufficient for what had to be said.

Three years earlier, on the first day the café opened, Tomas had held up the sign he'd painted himself. Night Café, open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tomas laughed because he couldn't get the letters straight. Dara had stood beside him, looking at the camera, unaware that before the shutter clicked, Tomas had whispered, "We can always close if it doesn't work."

He hadn't meant it as reassurance. Only as an acknowledgment that failure was possible. Back then, they had been certain. About each other. About Limina. About everything that now felt like a foreign language. Now the question was no longer whether they were certain.

Dara took the photograph down and slipped it into her bag, not because she wanted to forget, but because she couldn't bear to leave Tomas's face hanging on the wall of an empty room.

"Take care of yourself, dear," Mrs. Wati had said that morning before leaving.

Don't stay here too long.

Dara had walked her to the door. The street outside was already hot. Neither of them had said anything else.

Mira, her cousin, had been asking for two years. "When are you going to leave, Dara?"

Mira ran a small guesthouse in the southern district of Aldara. Dara had always answered later. The word had done its work for two years.

The café couldn't be left yet. The situation wasn't stable. But the visa letter didn't care whether Dara was ready.

She folded the cloth, placed it beneath the counter, and sat on the stool behind the bar.

Mira had told her about Aldara. Streets with familiar names. Familiar food. Older people who called the river by the same name they used here. Dara had listened to all of it without once asking what the river was called there.

Dara had never been to Aldara. But listening to Mira talk about it made her feel less like someone who was leaving than someone who was going back.

Tomas was supposed to come tonight. For three days Dara had wiped the same tables, folded the same cloth, and checked the same clock. The conversation was coming. She had run out of small things to do before it arrived.

Fourteen days. The number didn't care whether she was ready.

✦ ✦ ✦

II. Tomas

THE WESTERN CHECKPOINT closed at seven in the evening and reopened at six in the morning. Unless there was a "situation," which could mean anything. A shooting. Someone coughing too loudly in front of the wrong soldier.

Tomas had a medical permit. One official sheet of paper. Healthcare worker. Nonpartisan clinic operations. Legal. Every time he handed it to a Sarayan soldier, there was a pause of two or three seconds whose meaning he never knew. Cell or clinic.

Tonight, the soldier on duty was young. Twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. His face still held traces of innocence not yet entirely worn away by the uniform. He read Tomas's permit twice, then looked at him.

"Medical?"

"Yes."

"Which clinic?"

"East Bank. The red-brick building near the old university."

The young soldier handed the paper back. He didn't smile, but he didn't stop him either.

Tomas passed through the gate. The road on the other side was already busy. He walked with the traffic until his breathing settled.

On the wall of a bank building that no longer operated, there was fresh graffiti. An LM symbol painted in red. Sarayan propaganda layered over it in black. And over that, something belonging to neither side: the silhouette of a butterfly facing the river. Tomas didn't know who had painted it. He had seen it on a wall near the clinic, on the underside of the bridge, and once, at night, on the door of a building that no longer had a door. Three places. One week.

Ahead of him, an elderly woman was dragging a wheeled suitcase, one wheel catching on the cracked pavement. Tomas quickened his pace.

"Let me help."

She turned, then smiled. The smile didn't recognize Tomas's face. It recognized something in it. She looked at him the way people in Limina sometimes did, as though he were standing where someone else used to stand.

"You're Aron, aren't you? Mr. Vale's boy?"

"No. I'm Tomas."

"Oh."

She let go of the suitcase. "But you look like a good boy."

Tomas took the suitcase and walked half a block beside her, feeling its weight in his hand. At an old door with peeling paint, he set it down carefully, as though it were something fragile.

"Thank you," the woman said. "Your parents must be proud."

Tomas nodded. He didn't correct her.

His parents had died sixteen years ago, but in Limina, a sentence like that didn't need correcting.

You're still here.

That was what people really meant.

He continued toward Night Café. From a distance, the lights inside were still on. He could see Dara's silhouette moving behind the glass, folding, arranging, doing things that no longer needed doing. As if her body refused to still.

He stopped across the street.

"Three days," Reza had said yesterday. "The operation is moving deeper. We need you full-time."

Tomas already knew Reza wouldn't accept no for an answer.

But he also knew Dara wouldn't accept yes.

Between those two answers, Tomas stood across the street, looking at the light inside the café. He did not know when the decision had last been his.

He crossed the street. He put his hand on the door.

✦ ✦ ✦

III. Both

THE DOOR OPENED. Dara looked up from behind the bar. For a fraction of a second, her expression held two things at once. Relief. Then the other thing. Tomas had known that face for three years, and he had learned not to name what he saw in it.

Dara poured coffee without asking. Black. Two sugars. A cup slightly larger than standard because Tomas always asked for more, and Dara knew without having to remember. A habit formed without either of them noticing. Dara looked at the cup. Black. Two sugars. Larger than standard. She would not pour coffee this way again.

They sat at the table in the left-hand corner. Always this table. The chairs faced the window, and from there they could see the intersection without turning their heads.

Tomas looked at the coffee, still too hot.

"Busy today?"

"Mrs. Wati. That was it."

Silence. Outside, a motorcycle passed. One. Then nothing. Neither of them spoke. Dara put her cup down. "I got the visa."

Tomas looked up.

"Aldara. Mira has a guesthouse there. She says I can work with her."

A pause.

Outside, the wind moved a loose board on the roof, the one Tomas had been saying for months he would fix and never had time to.

"I leave in two weeks. If I go."

"If?" Tomas asked.

Dara looked at him. Her eyes weren't wet. Dara wasn't someone who cried at the beginning of difficult conversations. "Come with me, Tomas." She said it directly. No preamble.

The words struck him. He wanted to say yes. He wanted to stand up, take his bag, and say I'll come. We'll leave tomorrow. His hand stayed on the table.

"We can start over," Dara said. "Aldara is safe. Mira says they need medical staff at the clinic there. We can have a life. A normal one. Together."

Tomas opened his mouth, then closed it. "Okay." The word came out faster than he intended. "Okay. We'll find a way."

Dara looked at him. Something appeared in her eyes. Not hope. Something that had learned to be smaller than hope.

"I can try to arrange a visa. Lenna knows someone, a broker at the checkpoint." The words came before he had time to weigh them. "Or I can get out another way. Ezra once said he could get people out if—"

"Tomas."

He stopped.

"You know that won't work. Saraya already has your name. If they catch you trying to leave Limina illegally, you'll never make it to Aldara."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" He wasn't angry. He genuinely didn't know the answer. "Tell me. Anything. I'll try."

Dara said nothing.

Tomas stood and walked to the window. The street outside was empty. He kept his back to Dara and spoke to the glass. "I want you to come with me. But you can't. And I can't stay here waiting for you." He didn't finish. He didn't need to.

Tomas turned and walked back to the table. He stopped before sitting, standing on the same side of it as Dara, but not close. A distance that wasn't easy to read.

"Don't go." Two words. Spoken as if his entire life had been folded into them.

Dara looked up. Her eyes were wet now. "I have to."

"You don't." He finally sat down, in his own chair, not beside Dara. "We can find another way."

"There isn't another way, Tomas." She wasn't angry. Her sadness went deeper than anger. "You know that. Stop pretending."

A long silence. The loose board on the roof. Soft. Repeated.

"Mrs. Halim needs her insulin monitored every day," Tomas said quietly, as though counting the names aloud might make the numbers real. "The Kosan twins, two eight-year-olds. They have asthma attacks every other night when the pollution is bad. Mr. Jodi has a shrapnel wound that gets infected if it isn't cleaned regularly."

Dara said nothing.

"If I leave, who takes care of them?"

"There are other medical staff—"

"Who?"

He wasn't angry. He only wanted to know.

"Lenna is already overwhelmed. The clinic lost two people last month. We can barely handle the people we have now."

"Tomas—"

"They need me." There was no pride in it. Only the sound of someone stating a fact he wished weren't true. "The names I know. The faces I know. If I leave, they have no one."

Dara looked at him for a long time. "I need you too." Her voice dropped into a place more honest, more fragile.

Tomas closed his eyes. "I know." Barely above a whisper.

"And it's not the same."

"Why isn't it?"

"Because losing me won't destroy you." He opened his eyes and looked directly at her. "You're strong. You have family in Aldara. You'll get back on your feet." A pause. "They won't," Tomas continued. "I'm not saying they're more important than you. But you have a way out. They have nothing except me."

Dara looked at him until Tomas wanted to become a different version of himself. "LM contacted you again." It wasn't a question.

Tomas didn't answer.

Dara watched him not answer. That was the answer.

"When do you leave?"

Not whether.

When.

"Two days," Tomas said. "Maybe three. Reza wants me full-time at the safe houses on the East Bank."

Dara repeated it.

"Two days."

She had closed the café books at midnight for three years. The numbers always came out the same.

"I have two weeks. You have two days."

"Yes."

Dara stood and walked behind the counter, her back to Tomas. "Where do I fit into your plan?"

"Dara—"

"No." She didn't turn around. "I'm asking seriously. Where do I fit? Do I wait here while you're underground? Visit you at a safe house that isn't safe for me?"

Tomas stood and walked toward the counter. The bar between them was a dividing line. "I don't want you to disappear." He placed his hand on the counter, close to Dara's but not touching. "I don't know what I want. Every possibility I can see ends with someone getting hurt."

Dara wiped something from her cheek with the back of her hand, quickly, like someone angry with herself for crying. Then she did something Tomas didn't expect. She laughed. One brief sound, and then nothing.

"Tomas." Her voice was still wet, but different now. "You know we've known this was how it would end, don't you?"

He didn't answer.

"Since the first night LM contacted you. Since I started packing the recipe books." She looked at the boxes in the corner. "We just didn't want to be the first one to say it."

Tomas looked at the boxes too. "Yes."

Dara picked up Tomas's untouched coffee and placed it behind the counter.

"I understand that you can't leave." She stopped. "I understand."

Tomas waited.

But there was no and.

"And I have to choose myself." Dara looked at Tomas, and for the first time that night, she didn't look away. "We're over."

Tomas stood there. He didn't let his face change. If he showed her what he felt, Dara would know he was wavering, and his uncertainty would make everything harder.

He walked to the door. His hand on the handle. His back to Dara, because if he turned around, he wouldn't be able to leave. "I love you." His voice was steadier than he expected.

A long silence.

"I know."

A pause.

Tomas waited.

But Dara added nothing.

I know.

That was all.

She wouldn't say I love you too.

She wouldn't say I'm sorry.

Only I know.

Tomas opened the door and stepped outside.

Inside, Dara listened to his footsteps disappear into the distance. One. Two. Three. Then there was nothing left to count.

She sank down onto the floor behind the counter. The cabinet was cold against her back. She pulled her knees to her chest. She cried without sound. Slowly at first. Then without stopping.

Outside, Tomas walked two blocks before stopping at a quiet corner. He leaned against the wall of an old building and closed his eyes. The brick was cold. He didn't cry. Not yet. He stood there with his head tilted toward the sky.

All he knew now was the distance between himself and Dara. Once, it had been only the counter between them. Now it felt like all of Limina.

Above him, the sky was beginning to fill with stars. One by one. Unhurried.

✦ ✦ ✦

PART TWO: WHAT CANNOT BE SAID

IV. The Clinic — Tomas

TOMAS closed the ledger, its pages beginning to yellow. The last patient had already left, an eight-year-old girl with a four-day fever, brought through the back roads behind the market because the main gate was closed. He had brought the fever down, given her antibiotics, entered the case in the ledger. Her mother paid with two eggs and a packet of salt. Tomas accepted them.

Then he sat in the chair with the short leg, the one he had been saying for two months that he would fix and still hadn't found the time to.

Through the small window, cracked at the lower-left corner, he could see part of the street. The streetlights along the east side were working intermittently now. Saraya cut the electricity three nights a week without warning. That was why the night shift was always busier. People who couldn't come during the day because of the checkpoints eventually found their way here, to the clinic with the uneven chair.

He looked at the medicine shelf. A shipment arrived last month: antibiotics, bandages, a few ampoules they had been without for a long time. From the same donor. For years now, always on time.

No name.

The back door opened.

Reza. Forty-eight, his hair always slightly longer on one side. He was wearing the jacket with the hand-stitched shoulder Tomas had repaired himself after Kosamaya. He carried two thermoses of coffee and set one on Tomas's desk without asking.

"Operation's moving," Reza said. He took his usual chair beside Tomas, not across from him.

"Next week. The safe houses on the east side are full. We need a new point in the south."

"How many?"

"Twelve. Three of them are children."

Tomas drank his coffee. It was too hot, but he drank it anyway.

"A southern point means we're closer to the Saraya line."

"Yes."

"If they find out—"

"They won't." Reza said it without complete certainty, more like someone who had already considered the alternative and decided that moving was still better than staying still. "You don't need to be there. We only need your signature on the medical permits. We'll handle the rest."

Tomas looked at Reza's unopened thermos on his own desk.

"Dara's leaving next week."

Reza didn't answer immediately. He knew about Dara. Tomas had never hidden her.

"I know."

A brief silence.

"What do you want me to say, Tomas? That you can go with her?" He looked toward the cracked window. "I can't say that."

"I didn't ask you to."

Reza didn't answer at once. He opened his thermos, took a drink, then set it back down.

"My mother died last month."

He said it in the same tone as the operation's moving and three children.

"I couldn't go to her funeral. The checkpoints were closed for three days."

Tomas looked at him.

Reza didn't look back.

"Everyone loses something. You lose Dara. I lost my mother without being able to go to her funeral. The people in those safe houses have lost more than they can name." He stood. "But we're still here."

He headed for the back door.

"The permit's on the front desk. It doesn't have to be tonight."

The door closed.

Tomas was left alone with two thermoses of coffee. He had drunk half of one. Reza's was still full.

The permit remained on the desk until morning. Tomas didn't sign it. But when he left the clinic, it was inside his bag.

✦ ✦ ✦

V. The Old Woman — Dara

NIGHT CAFÉ was already closed, but the door hadn't been locked. Dara sat behind the bar with a cup of tea that had gone cold, counting the sugar she needed to restock.

The front door opened. An old woman stood in the doorway, leaning on a wooden cane. Her hair was completely white.

"Still open?"

"Already closed."

Dara looked at the woman standing there with her cane.

"But you can come in if you need to sit."

The woman came inside. She walked to the nearest chair and sat down heavily.

Dara poured the remaining tea from the kettle, already cold. She set it on the table without asking.

"Thank you."

They didn't speak for several minutes. The woman drank her tea slowly. Dara continued counting the sugar even though she already knew the number.

"Where are you from?" Dara asked at last.

"West side." The woman set down her cup. "My grandson is on the east side. The checkpoint closed at seven. I didn't make it in time. I can cross tomorrow morning."

"You're staying here tonight?"

"Someone took me in." She nodded toward nothing in particular. "An old neighbor."

Outside, the wind moved along the empty street.

"You're leaving," the woman said.

Dara looked up.

"Those boxes." She pointed toward the corner without looking at them. "They're half full but you haven't taped them shut. People who are still unsure usually do that."

Dara didn't know what to say.

"My husband used to do the same." She spoke to her cup of tea. "When he was going to leave. To join the movement. He packed, but he never quite finished. I thought he was hesitating."

She blew on her tea, though it was already cold.

"Turns out he wasn't hesitating. He just didn't want to finish packing. Because once it was done, it meant he was really leaving."

Dara said nothing.

"Was he all right?" she asked.

The woman set down her cup and straightened the cane, which had tilted slightly.

"No."

Dara waited.

"Six months after he left. My grandson is twenty-two now. I only met him a month ago, when the checkpoint happened to open for three days."

Dara wanted to ask something but didn't know what.

"Don't you regret it?"

The question came out before Dara could weigh it.

The woman looked at her for the first time since sitting down. "Every day."

Dara didn't move.

The woman looked toward the boxes again, as though she had only just remembered they were there.

"But I'm still alive. And he isn't."

The woman struggled to her feet and reached for her cane.

"The tea was good. Even cold."

At the doorway, she stopped. She didn't turn around.

"The boxes. If you already know you're leaving, tape them shut now. The rest is just making yourself suffer."

She left before Dara could answer.

Dara sat still for several minutes. Then she stood and walked to the corner. She took a roll of tape from the bottom drawer beneath the register.

She sealed the first box. Pressed the tape down. Wrote on the surface with a marker: Recipe books.

The second box: Cups.

She stopped at the third, which contained Tomas's gray jacket.

She sat on the floor in front of it. She didn't close it. Not tonight.

✦ ✦ ✦

VI. The Second Conversation — Both

TOMAS arrived fifteen minutes before the café closed. Earlier than usual.

Dara already knew he would come. The boxes were all sealed. Except one.

Dara poured coffee. No two sugars tonight. Just black.

She set it on the corner table and sat down. Tomas took the chair opposite her.

"Tomorrow morning," Dara said.

Not a question.

"Yes," Tomas said.

Tomas looked at his coffee. For three years, he had always lifted it first. Tonight his hand stayed on the table.

The silence was different from the night before.

"I want to apologize," he said. His voice was too quiet.

Dara looked up.

"Not because I was wrong. I don't know if I was wrong." He looked at his hands on the table. "But I understand why this isn't enough. You deserve more than this."

Dara didn't answer.

"You don't have to apologize for something you can't change."

"I know. But still."

"What would you do," Dara asked, "if one day you could leave?"

Tomas looked at her. He hadn't expected the question.

"Maybe nothing would change," Tomas said. "The clinic has become part of me. Not because I'm trapped. Because it's what I want." He looked at his coffee. "But maybe I'd follow you there. Someday. Before coming back."

Dara looked at him for a moment.

"I'm not going to wait for you, Tomas."

"I know."

"Not because I don't care."

"I know that too."

The café window trembled in its frame.

"I'm going to blame you," Tomas said. "Not now. Later. Maybe I won't even realize I'm doing it. If there's a day when I can't handle everything on my own, I'll remember that you left."

Dara didn't answer.

"I know. I'll blame you too. Not because I hate you," Dara said.

"I know."

"Because you'll be there and I'll be here and that's—" She stopped. "That's the hardest part."

Tomas nodded. "I don't know what else there is to say."

They sat in a long silence. There was no need to hurry.

Tomas finally drank his coffee. It was cold. He winced.

"No sugar."

Dara looked at him. For the first time in three years, she'd forgotten.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Tomas heard the pause before the words. He drank again.

The café closed at ten. Tomas helped lower the shutters. He already knew where the latch stuck, already knew to push it with his left shoulder so he wouldn't need the extra lock.

They stood outside the darkened café.

"Don't look back," Dara said. "If you do, you'll come down."

Tomas didn't understand at first. He looked at Dara, trying to read her face beneath the café light as it began to dim.

"When I was little, I climbed the guava tree behind Mira's house. It was so high I was terrified. But if I looked down halfway up, I couldn't keep going. I had to keep looking up until I reached where I was going."

She paused and looked down at her hands.

"I don't know what I mean by that," she said at last. "Maybe tomorrow. Maybe you. Maybe me."

Tomas looked at her.

"I'll try not to look back."

"I know you won't be able to."

"Neither will you."

Dara didn't argue.

They stood there for a few seconds. They didn't touch.

Tomas left first.

Dara waited until his shadow disappeared at the intersection. Then she went inside and locked the door.

The boxes stood in the corner. The eight tables were empty.

She walked to the third box. Tomas's gray jacket was still inside. She could see the edge of the collar through the gap that hadn't been sealed. Her hand moved to close the box, pressing the tape along the edge, then searched for the pen she'd used to label the first two.

She found it on the cashier's counter. An old pen, its ink already beginning to run dry.

She returned to the box. Pen in hand. Its tip hovered over the cardboard, directly beneath the word jacket she hadn't written yet.

The pen never touched the box.

✦ ✦ ✦

PART THREE: CHOICES

VII. The Decision — Tomas

THE permit letter was still on the clinic's front desk the next morning.

Tomas sat on the chair with the uneven leg. It still had not been fixed. He looked at the letter. There was one thing he had never told Dara, and never would. He was afraid.

Not of Saraya. Not anymore. What he feared was the version of himself that could exist only here. In this clinic, among patients whose names he knew by heart, on streets where he knew exactly where the potholes were. If he left, what would remain?

This was the only place where he knew who he was.

And he could not tell Dara that. Part of him stayed because he needed them, just as they needed him. He did not know whether that made his decision more right or more wrong.

He picked up the pen.

Signed.

Lenna stood in the doorway at the back of the clinic. She did not ask what he had just signed. She already knew.

"Dara leaves tomorrow?"

"Yes."

Lenna went into the clinic and opened the medicine drawer. She began counting the supplies.

"We're low on morphine," Lenna said at last.

"I know."

"Reza said there might be a shipment from the south next week."

"If it gets here."

Lenna closed the drawer.

"You're still on the night shift?"

"I am."

Lenna nodded and went back to her room.

Tomas looked at the letter he had signed. The ink was already dry. He folded it and placed it inside the envelope Reza had prepared.

Outside the window, the streetlights along the East Bank began going out one by one. Saraya was cutting the power today. Tomas counted. Three lit. One dark. Two lit. One dark. No pattern he could predict.

✦ ✦ ✦

VIII. Two Futures — Tomas

THE FIRST FUTURETURE — He Leaves

He imagined himself in Aldara. Six months. A year. Dara knowing the way to the market, Tomas still learning. Dara walking quickly, getting ahead of him. Tomas falling behind, learning to become someone who waited.

And then the faces.

Mrs. Halim, seventy-two, her insulin injection every morning, her hands shaking if Tomas was not the one who came. The Kosan Twins, eight years old, asthma attacks every other night when the pollution was bad, and Tomas already knowing the sound of their breathing from outside the door. Mr. Jodi, the shrapnel wound in his calf refusing to heal, though he never complained. He only ever asked whether Tomas would be coming back tomorrow.

He would live without knowing whether they were all right. And that was what he could not carry to Aldara. Not Limina. Not the resistance. Not LM.

THE SECOND FUTURE — He Stays

If he stayed, he would blame Dara. He had already told her that. What he had not told her was that he would blame himself too. One day, among the patients and the night shifts, he would realise that he could no longer remember Dara's face exactly. That would feel like a deeper betrayal than any decision he had made.

But he was not afraid of dying. Not because he was brave. He was simply too tired to be afraid.

Between two futures, only one left those people with someone.

Tomas lay on the clinic cot until the sky outside the window began to brighten. Then he got up, washed his face, and began the morning shift.

✦ ✦ ✦

IX. The Goodbye — Both of Them

DARA left Night Café before dawn.

A backpack on her shoulders. One small suitcase. The photograph inside her bag, untouched since the day she had put it there.

Tomas was waiting outside, though he had not told Dara he would be. Dara herself had never told him what time she would come out.

But he was there.

And she was not surprised.

They stood on the pavement while the street was still dark. The road was empty. The Marga River could be heard in the distance, though they could not see it. Water moving without concern for what happened along its banks.

"Where are you getting the taxi?" Tomas asked.

"The main intersection. Mr. Salim said he'd be there at five."

"Still twenty minutes."

"Yes."

Twenty minutes.

Tomas wanted to say something large. He couldn't find it.

"I want to say—" He stopped. "No. There's nothing I can say that you don't already know."

Dara looked at him. "Me neither."

"If one day Limina—" Dara began, then stopped.

"If?"

She shook her head. "A question that can't be answered."

Tomas wanted to touch her. They stood too close for him not to.

Dara moved first, stepping into his arms.

Tomas put his arms around her back. Dara's backpack pressed between them.

Outside, the streetlights went out one by one. Three lit. One dark. Two lit.

In the distance, the Marga River kept moving with the same sound it had made since he was a child.

They stood that way for a few seconds.

Or longer.

Neither of them counted.

Dara was the one who let go first. She stepped back.

"Promise me you'll be happy."

Tomas looked at her. He knew it was not a promise he could make. He knew Dara knew that too.

"I can't promise you that."

"I know." Dara lifted her bag. "But I'm still going to ask."

The sound of an engine came from the end of the street.

Mr. Salim, five minutes early.

Dara turned and walked away.

Tomas did not call after her. He did not run. He watched her back recede, the backpack too large for her frame.

In the distance, Mr. Salim's taxi waited with its lights on.

At the intersection, Dara stopped.

She did not turn around.

From where he stood, Tomas could see her shadow beneath one of the streetlights still burning.

Dara got into the taxi.

The door closed.

The engine started.

Tomas remained on the pavement until he could no longer hear the car.

✦ ✦ ✦

X. Time Notes

DARA's bus passed through the western checkpoint at 6:03 a.m.

Tomas crossed the bridge toward the East Bank at 6:09 a.m.

Six minutes.

Less than a kilometre.

The Marga River flowed between them. Brown and slow beneath the morning light.

— END —

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Six minutes.

Less than a kilometer.

The Marga River runs between them.

Dara left for Aldara. Tomas stayed in Limina.

Yet one question lingered, not who was right, or who was wrong, but what becomes of those who remain in a city that never stops asking, and those who leave because they have nothing left to give.

Dara and Tomas's story is only one of Limina's many voices.

This novel follows another.

A woman whose name has gone unspoken for ten years. The man who returns across the river. A single night that will change everything.

The Way You Say Their Name is about the names we never find the courage to speak honestly.