The wind howled through cracked windows, carrying whispers of stories untold along with it. Celia sat at the creaky wooden table, her fingers tracing the fine lines of the lace gauze draped over her right hand—a gauze she wore out of habit now, as its significance had long faded into something she could barely grasp. Her eyes flickered with the light of the lone candle that struggled against the dark, casting flickering shadows like ancient ghosts on worn-out walls.

“Does it ever bother you?” Thomas asked, his voice a mixture of curiosity and the familiar comfort of long conversations shared in weary hours past midnight. He was lounging in the armchair, a voluminous book he pretended to read forgotten in his lap.

“What?” Celia cleared her throat, disentangling herself from the winding path of her thoughts.

“The gauze. I’ve seen you wear it for as long as I can remember, and yet, its purpose is as mysterious as ever to me.”

She laughed, a soft, almost musical sound, though it echoed with nothingness—an unanswered question caught in the web of her consciousness. “Oh, Thomas, it’s just a relic of a time when things seemed important. Now? It’s just an accessory, really. Not important—‘不重要的gauze,’ if you will.”

The room crept into silence, except for the persistent breath of the wind that seemed to cradle forgotten secrets. Celia’s gaze grew distant, as though she was trying to hold onto the ephemeral texture of memories that blurred into dreams by morning.

“It’s like a ghost that won’t move on,” Thomas murmured, nodding toward the gauze, perhaps meaning more than just the cloth, perhaps touching on the haunted air that sometimes surrounded them both. “A touch of the 灵异 in our every day.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Celia’s question was so soft, it might have been imagined if not for the sharp eyes that turned towards him.

“In people, yes. We haunt ourselves with pasts and wishes and things unsaid.” He leaned forward, the words capturing him too fully.

A laugh, tinged with tenderness, escaped her lips again. “Don’t we all?” she said. “What about the stories we leave behind, told only through the lives we’ve touched?”

Thomas sighed, brushing his fingers through his dark hair as though trying to disentangle thoughts much like Celia’s gauze. “Maybe they’re just like us—wandering voices looking for something to anchor them.”

The candle wept wax as the shadows danced a witching spell upon them. Outside, a branch scrabbled against the window, pleading for entrance, only to be denied by an indifferent listener.

Celia looked into the pooling wax, the realization settling upon her lightly. She shrugged, a gesture both contained and expansive. “Perhaps we are all threads waiting for a tapestry, or maybe just threads endlessly weaving.”

The air grew quiet again. The night continued its relentless progression toward dawn, neither offering closure nor seeking it. As seconds turned into minutes, the ephemeral lingering of their conversation faded into the embrace of sleep.

In the morning’s graying light, Celia woke to find the gauze had slipped from her fingers, revealing bare skin beneath. She hesitated, then wrapped it round her hand once more, binding time and silence together in a perfect, haunting bind.

Thomas, eyes closed, dreamed on, his own mysteries securely held behind eyes that flickered lightly in sleep— a symphony of thoughts without a conductor.

And so their story drifted, 无疾而终, neither resolved nor concluded, caught forever in the soft weave of words and dreams.