They move like whispers through the marble halls of the Met.
Two pretty girls—early twenties, maybe less—one in a flowing cream blouse, the other in black boots that click softly on polished floors. Their eyes scan the placards, the brushstrokes, the sculptures that lean through centuries. They don’t speak much, but their silence is companionable, a rhythm older than conversation.
In the Great Hall, they pause.
Sunlight filters through the glass wall, spilling across ancient stone. One girl squints, turns her head just so, and the light frames her like a portrait—soft jawline, long earrings, a strand of hair falling just imperfect enough. The other raises her phone but stops halfway. Some things aren’t meant to be captured. Some beauty is for being, not keeping.
They sit on the stone ledge, close but not touching, gazing at the carved falcons and faded hieroglyphs. One of them laughs quietly—a sudden, breathy sound like wind in silk.
“She’d have loved this,” one says, referring to a friend or grandmother or professor who isn’t there.
The other nods. “It feels like a place you should whisper in, but not because it’s quiet. Because it matters.”
Around them, other visitors pass—couples, students, children dragging feet. But the girls remain still, like they’ve stepped inside a frame no one else can see.
They talk softly about the things young women talk about when surrounded by ancient gods: love, hunger, how it feels to be seen, how it feels not to be. One fingers a gold ring as she speaks; the other folds and unfolds the museum map without reading it.
When they rise to leave, their shadows stretch across the stone floor, following them like echo. They don’t walk fast. They walk like they belong—not just in the museum, but in the moment, in the act of being young and luminous under the weight of old things.
Somewhere behind them, a guard watches and smiles.
He’s seen thousands of visitors.
But every so often, two pass through who seem made of the same stillness as the art.