If you miss the last train, get married anyway.

There will be another car. Another corner open late. Another version of the route you did not take.

They miss it by less than a minute. They hear it before they see it, a long rising note under the street, and Asha is still on the stairs with her shoes in her hand when the doors close and the lit carriages pull away into the tunnel. Leo, out of breath, starts to laugh. The station clock says 02:03. There is a night bus in forty minutes, or there is the walk, and they choose the walk.

The point was never to arrive untouched by the city. It was to be changed by the movement—and to find, at the end of it, the person who still knows exactly how to take your hand.

Editorial note: A work of editorial fiction; people, places and makers are illustrative.