By the time Elijah’s flight landed, the woman in the corner had already finished one coffee and allowed the second to go cold.
She did not look like someone waiting for news.
That was deliberate.
People waiting for news had a particular stillness. A held breath. A little too much attention in the hands. They checked doors too often, touched their phones too often, looked up whenever cutlery fell.
She did none of those things.
She sat beside the window of a small corner café in a country where no one knew her name, with a scarf around her hair, a chipped mug beside her hand, and rain threading silver lines down the glass.
The café was ordinary enough to be useful.
No velvet chairs.
No polished floors.
No waiter asking if everything was to her liking.
Just a counter, a chalkboard menu, six small tables, a pastry case, and a woman behind the till who shouted orders with the tired authority of someone who had seen every kind of customer and been impressed by none of them.
Perfect.
Ordinary places were the hardest to search because nobody believed anything important could happen there.
A small voice clicked in her ear.
“Ma’am, confirmation. His flight has landed.”
The woman did not move.
Not at first.
Then her fingers loosened around the paper napkin she had been folding into smaller and smaller squares.
“Status?”
“Cleared arrivals. No secondary inspection. No visible tail inside the terminal.”
She closed her eyes.
Only for a second.
Long enough for relief to pass through her without becoming visible.
“Good,” she said.
The voice paused.
“Do you want us to approach?”
“No.”
“He is asking questions.”
“He always asks questions.”
“He asked for about the Receipt!”
The woman looked out at the rain.
Her reflection stared back from the glass. Older than she remembered. Calmer than she felt. Alive, which had become an increasingly inconvenient condition.
“No contact,” she said.
“Understood.”
The line went quiet.
For a moment, she let herself breathe.
Elijah was safe.
Not free.
Not yet.
But safe enough to keep moving.
That would have to be enough.
She reached for her bag.
Then the woman behind the counter called out:
“One Neeba Special!”
The room did not stop.
Rooms never stop when a life cracks open.
A chair scraped.
Milk hissed behind the counter.
Someone laughed near the door.
The woman in the corner stayed very still.
The name had not been spoken loudly. It had not needed to be. It entered the room softly and found her anyway.
The cashier glanced down at the order slip and called again.
“One Neeba Special?”
Only then did the woman look up.
There, on the counter, beside the coffee cups and paper bags and cheap silver teaspoons, sat a plate that had no business existing in that café.
Three smoked sausages.
Potatoes.
Peppers.
Dark sauce.
Arranged with absurd care, as though the sausages had gathered for a private meeting and the potatoes had been invited against their better judgement.
Her mouth went dry.
No.
Not here.
Not in this country.
Not when Elijah was half a world away.
The Neeba Special had never been on any menu.
It had not belonged to cafés, kitchens, or strangers with order slips.
It belonged to a boy who once found her crying behind an old community hall and decided, with the grave confidence of childhood, that sorrow could be negotiated with food.
He had arrived carrying a plastic plate and a meal so strange she had stopped crying out of pure suspicion.
“What is this?” she had asked.
“Dinner,” Elijah said.
“It looks like a warning.”
“It is balanced.”
“The sausages look like they know something.”
“They are protecting the potatoes.”
“That is not comforting.”
He had sat beside her anyway.
That was the thing about Elijah.
He never asked sadness to explain itself. He simply arrived beside it, placed food between them, and waited.
After that, whenever she disappeared into herself, he made it again.
Three sausages.
Potatoes.
Peppers.
Sauce.
Never elegant.
Never sensible.
Always his.
And always with a secret hidden somewhere inside it.
A raisin.
A sweetcorn kernel.
A piece of apple.
Once, a jelly sweet, which she had called an act of emotional… she could not finish the thought!
“You need one surprise,” he used to say, “or sadness starts thinking it owns the room.”
The woman in the café stood.
Not because she wanted to.
Because some names are not called.
They are pulled from you.
At the sugar station, a man in a grey coat lifted his head.
Small movement.
Too small for anyone else.
Enough for her.
Her hand tightened around the strap of her bag.
So that was it.
Not a gift.
A test.
Someone had sent the plate into the room to see who would answer to the name.
The voice in her ear returned.
“Ma’am?”
She did not respond.
“Do not approach the counter.”
The cashier called again, irritated now.
“One Neeba Special?”
The woman walked forward.
Every step felt too loud.
The café remained beautifully, cruelly normal. People stirred coffee. Tore pastries. Read messages. Held conversations that would never matter to anyone trying not to be seen.
She reached the counter.
The cashier pushed the plate toward her.
“There you go.”
The woman looked at her.
“Who ordered this?”
The cashier shrugged.
“Paid already.”
“By who?”
“No name. Just the order.”
The man in the grey coat turned slightly.
The woman could feel him now.
Not looking.
Waiting.
There is a difference.
She picked up the plate.
It was warm.
Of course it was warm.
That offended her most of all.
The voice in her ear sharpened.
“Leave it.”
She should have.
She knew that.
Leaving was clean.
Leaving was smart.
Leaving kept people alive.
But the plate sat in her hands like a memory that had crossed borders without permission.
And Elijah had always hidden the secret where she least wanted to look.
Her eyes moved over the potatoes.
Nothing.
The peppers.
Nothing.
The sauce.
Nothing.
Then the first sausage.
Her breath caught.
A laugh rose in her throat, small and broken and entirely inappropriate.
Because after all these years, after all the running and training and names she had worn like borrowed coats, some part of her was still the girl behind the community hall asking where he had hidden the surprise.
And some part of Elijah was still the boy grinning beside her, proud of the one thing he knew how to do.
Feed what hurt.
She heard his voice before she remembered the words.
The secret is in the…
“Sausage,” she whispered.
The man in the grey coat moved.
So did she.
#freewritehouse #pic1000 #contest #pictureprompt #creativewriting #innerblocks
