I wonder where she went

Hours pass. The light shifts—dim at first, then darker still, as the afternoon slips toward evening. The old woman remains in her chair, eyes fixed on the rain. She hasn't moved, not really. Just a slow turn of the head now and then, as if chasing a sound she can’t name or following a thought she can’t catch.

The rain has not stopped. It falls in steady streams now, tracing long, jagged paths down the glass. Each drop seems to stretch the silence, drawing time out like thread unraveling from the spool of her mind.

"That one," she whispers, watching a large droplet snake down the pane. "That one was a Christmas... I think. You had that red scarf. Or was it me?"

Another drop. Another memory, slipping free, vanishing into the blur of the glass.

"Was it snowing then?" she asks the window. "I thought it always snowed on Christmas."

Her voice carries no urgency, no sadness—just the soft resignation of someone whose world is slipping out of reach, yet who no longer fights to hold on. She blinks slowly, her eyes reflecting the watery streaks before her.

A bird lands on the windowsill for a brief moment—then flies away. She doesn’t see it.

"I had a daughter once, I think," she says suddenly. "She had freckles, like stars. She used to sit right there, on the floor, and draw suns with yellow crayons."

Her gaze falls to the empty patch of carpet near the window. There's nothing there, but for a moment her lips curl into a gentle smile. A drop of rain thuds against the glass, heavier than the others, and the smile fades.

"I wonder where she went."

Dusk bleeds into night. Lamps hum to life elsewhere in the house—set by timers long ago. The room glows gold, then orange, then dull. Still she sits, wrapped in her cardigan, a thin shawl of grey draped across her shoulders like cobwebs of time.

"Time," she murmurs. "It’s so slippery. Like... like the rain. You try to catch it, but it just—"

She lifts a trembling hand toward the window, fingers spread wide as if trying to stop a raindrop with her palm. But her hand lowers again before it reaches the glass.

"Was I ever young?" she asks aloud. "I can’t remember how it felt. The running. The dancing. I know I did, but... it’s like hearing someone else's story."

Outside, the rain turns to mist, then fog. Night presses against the window like a quiet visitor.

She sighs, her breath slow and soft.

"Each drop… a memory," she says. "Each one... gone before I can hold it."

Silence again.

And yet she stays. Watching.

As the window becomes a mirror, and her reflection a stranger.