The city gleamed beneath the morning sun, its towering buildings like mirrors of steel and glass, catching every shard of light and scattering it across the streets. Enyo sat at the corner table of her favorite coffee shop, a modest place tucked between a towering pharmacy and an old bookshop that smelled of forgotten pages. She always chose this seat—not for the coffee, though it was decent—but for the view. From here, she could see the life that pulsed beyond the glass window without being a part of it.
There was a stillness to this place, even as the city roared just a few feet beyond the door. It was in these quiet corners that Enyo felt most herself. She had never been drawn to the center of things. She preferred the edges—the borderlands where life happened quietly, in fragments.
She sipped her drink slowly, her eyes scanning the street outside. People passed in waves: men in suits, women in sneakers and earbuds, children dragging backpacks nearly their size. Each face carried a story. Some wore theirs boldly, like billboards. Others, like Enyo, tucked theirs behind their eyes, quietly.
A little girl passed by with her mother, skipping ahead with the untamed energy of youth. Her laughter—sharp and bright—cut through the air like windchimes in a storm. Enyo smiled faintly. She remembered a time when her own laughter had sounded like that, unrestrained and unworried. That was before the city, before the lessons life insisted on teaching.
She pulled out her notebook from her bag—a habit she had formed years ago. It wasn't for journaling, not in the typical sense. Enyo didn't record events. She recorded thoughts, fleeting ideas, impressions. Snippets of conversations overheard in the metro, descriptions of strangers, abstract feelings she couldn't explain in speech. Her notebook was more like a mirror than a diary, one that reflected not her day, but her inner world.
"Some people move through life as if chased. Others, like me, are pulled by something deeper. Not a race. A rhythm," she scribbled.
She paused, rereading the line. There was something in it. A truth. A reflection of what she'd long felt but rarely said aloud. She was not running like the woman in the suit she always saw. She was not racing like her coworkers, who chased deadlines and drained themselves for promotions. Enyo was listening. Waiting. Watching.
She thought of her childhood again—how she would sit in the back of her grandmother's house and watch the snails crawl across the garden stones. Their pace had fascinated her, not because it was slow, but because it was sure. They didn't rush, yet they always got where they were going. She never understood why she found it so comforting back then, but now, in the echoing buzz of city life, it made sense. The world hurried. But progress didn't have to be fast to be real.
Across the café, a conversation rose slightly in volume. Two men were debating politics, their tones clipped with urgency. She tuned them out. The noise of certainty rarely interested her. She preferred the questions, the silences between sentences.
A shadow flickered across the window, drawing her gaze. The woman in the black suit passed again, right on time, her face focused, unreadable. Enyo watched her with quiet curiosity. There was something magnetic about people who lived so differently. What drove her? What weighed on her shoulders? Did she ever feel tired of the pace? Did she ever long for stillness?
The door to the café chimed as someone entered, shaking Enyo from her thoughts. A boy, perhaps sixteen, with messy curls and ink-stained fingers, approached the counter. He ordered quietly, fumbling with his coins, before taking the seat two tables away. He pulled out a sketchpad, his hands moving quickly over the page. Enyo smiled. Another observer. Another soul living at the edges.
She lowered her pen, the page now full of words that danced between metaphor and meaning. She didn't always know what they meant until later. Sometimes, she felt like her thoughts moved slower than the world wanted them to. But that was okay. The city taught speed. But she—she was teaching herself patience. Reflection. Depth.
Enyo stood slowly, packing her notebook, her fingers lingering on the cover. She had named it years ago—The Shell. No one knew that but her. It was her metaphor for everything she carried, everything she kept hidden but always with her. It wasn't armour. It was memory. Thought. Intuition.
As she stepped outside, the sunlight touched her face, and the city embraced her again. The traffic roared. A vendor shouted prices. A bus whooshed by too fast. But Enyo moved slowly, as always, her pace deliberate. Some people ran. Others flowed. She flowed.
And deep within, under her quiet, careful steps, she carried her shell.