Held

The Still Hours

Nobody really noticed when Julie stopped moving.

It began subtly — fewer emails, fewer replies. Meetings missed. Dishes stacking in the sink. Her neighbors chalked it up to burnout, another casualty in a city that mistook motion for meaning. But after weeks passed and she remained on her fifth-floor balcony — barely shifting, eyes pinned to something far away — they began to wonder.

She still ate, just enough. Took sips of water. Her cat, Pita, meowed for food and sometimes curled on her lap. But Julie only moved when absolutely required. Her limbs had grown heavy, her muscles compliant but reluctant — like every command was a request they could deny.

It was a Tuesday, late in August, when her sister forced the door.

Barbara expected chaos. A body. But she found Julie — frail, still, alert. Not catatonic.

Not vacant. Just... profoundly still.

“You look like a statue,” Barbara said, fighting the urge to shake her.

Julie blinked, slow and deliberate. “I’ve stopped rushing,” she said. “It’s better this way.”

Barbara stayed the night. Tried to clean.

Called therapists, doctors, friends. No one had an answer. “Depression,” said one.

“Catatonia,” said another. But Julie wasn’t unresponsive. She just didn’t see urgency as necessary. Her speech was deliberate. Her needs were few. Barbara cried. Julie did not.

“I’m not sad,” she insisted. “I just don’t want to move anymore.”

By week’s end, Barbara left. Julie wasn’t declining. She wasn’t improving either. She was simply… conserving.

Three months later, a man named Matt moved into the building across the alley. He smoked on his balcony every night, the tip of his cigarette blinking like a warning buoy. He noticed Julie because she never left, always facing west, barely moving.

One night, he called across the dark- “You okay over there?”

Julie drew a long breath. “Are you?”

Matt gave a short, bitter laugh. “Touché.”

They spoke more after that. Brief exchanges. He was recovering from something he didn’t name — a collapse of one kind or another. She told him about her stillness. That’s what she called it — her Still Hours.

“You know when you’re too tired to sleep?” she said. “Not tired like exhausted. Just... used up. And gravity feels personal.”

He nodded like she could see him. “Been like that for a while.”

After that, they developed a rhythm. A sentence a night. A pause long enough to make room for meaning. She listened to his voice more than his words. He didn’t pry. He respected inertia.

Then, one evening, she didn’t answer.

He called out once. Twice. Nothing. She sat in her chair, unmoving.

The next night, his balcony was dark.

Julie noticed. Not with panic, but with a quiet ache — like a missing tooth she kept tonguing.

He returned on the third night.

“Sorry,” he said across the alley. “Needed a day.”

Julie blinked. “I know.”

Something changed after that. Their words didn’t increase, but their silences became more charged. There was something living inside the stillness now — a recognition.

News of Julie’s condition began to spread.

Not headlines, not hashtags. Just murmurs. A woman in the city who barely moved, barely spoke, and yet persisted. Some called it a protest. Others, performance art. A breakdown. A rebuke.

She didn’t care. Visitors rarely came. The few who did left unsettled. Her quiet unnerved them.

But Matt remained. He brought her soup in thermoses. Left them by the door. Never knocked.

“I used to think motion was survival,” he said one night. “Keep running, stay ahead.

Now I sit and watch the smoke curl. It’s the only thing that feels honest.”

Julie smiled. Barely.

Winter came. The city grew frantic in its shuffle against the cold. Julie stayed put.

Her skin paled. Her eyes sharpened. Pita grew fat and imperious. She spoke less, but felt more. Thought more. And the thoughts weren’t all gentle.

One night, a knock.

Not Matt. Not Barbara. A stranger.

An old woman — at least she seemed old — stood in the doorway. Her shawl hung like armor. Her eyes, silver. Her voice, hissing like steam.

“You’re the still girl,” the woman said.

Julie blinked. “Yes.”

“I was like you once. The world moved too fast. I sat down and let it pass. Trees grew beside me.”

Julie said nothing.

“You’re not broken,” the woman continued. “But stillness can heal, or it can rot. That’s the choice.”

Julie tilted her head — the most she’d moved in days. “How do I know which?”

The woman reached into her coat and pulled out a smooth, black stone. “Obsidian,” she said. “Born in fire. Perfectly still. Hold it for a day. If it warms, you’re ready to return. If it stays cold, you’re not done.”

Julie didn’t ask why. The logic made sense in the dreamlike rules of her Still Hours.

The woman left. No name. No goodbye.

Matt noticed the change.

“You’re moving more,” he said.

“Thinking more,” Julie replied. “Same thing.”

“You coming back?”

“Maybe. I’m holding a rock.”

He squinted. “That a metaphor?”

“Apparently not.”

The obsidian sat in her lap. Cold the first day. Cold the second. But by the third morning, it was tepid — like her body had remembered something. On the fifth, it was warm.

Pita meowed for food, and Julie stood up.

Her legs ached. Her back protested. But she moved.

Not fast. Not rushed. But fully.

She opened the door. Light poured in.

Down the alley, Matt saw her silhouette standing. He raised his hand. She raised hers back.

That spring, Julie returned to life.

Not to normal — never that — but to motion. Measured. Present. Her speech was soft, her steps deliberate. But she was there.

People asked for her story. She said no, at first. Then yes — but only once.

In an interview, they asked, “What did you learn from all that time?”

She didn’t hesitate.

“That urgency,” she said, “the kind that says ‘do more, be more, now’ — it’s a lie. Stillness isn’t quitting. It’s listening. It’s rest as rebellion. I stopped moving to survive. I started again to live.”

The interviewer scribbled something. Julie sipped tea. Smiled.

She could move now.

But she never stopped practicing the Still Hours. Just in case.