Fragment of Us

First Light Ciara remembered forever as a word Daniel had once spoken without ceremony, in a doorway dampened by rain, when neither of them yet understood how memory could turn a promise into disputed evidence. The kettle worried at the quiet behind her. Rain silvered the window, and the flat seemed to gather itself around the question he had brought home. Daniel stood with rain darkening his shoulders, steady and uncertain at once, as though courage were simply the refusal to leave before hearing the answer.