Day 5-Tunisia

Return and Radiance

The morning unfolded in soft peach tones, the desert still dreaming under the first breath of dawn. The jeep hummed along the empty road toward the airport. Autumn kept glancing back — the dunes seemed to shimmer with memory.

At the terminal, she lingered over a last coffee, tracing the spiral pendant with her fingertips. A few hours later, from her window seat high above the clouds, she watched the Sahara fade into gold mist. The rhythm of the engines was oddly soothing, like a heartbeat half-remembered.

Her phone buzzed. A message. A photo.

Their reflection in the oasis pool, a streak of silver light crossing the water where a shooting star had fallen.

“Next time,” he’d written, “let me show you how the desert looks at night under a full moon.”

She smiled, saving the image to a new folder titled Fire Over the Sahara.
Then she opened her journal one last time.

“Maybe the story isn’t finished after all,” she wrote. “Maybe it’s just changing horizons.”

She closed the notebook, slipped on her headphones, and watched the sun rise over the Mediterranean — a new chapter waiting just beyond the clouds.

“If you want to see what happens next,” she whispered with a smile, “come find me beneath the moonlight.”