The winter sun was hanging very low over the city, casting long golden ribbons across the sidewalks as Lynda went out of the train station. There was this gentle magic that the city of Vienna seems to always have, in the late evenings, not loud. Not forceful, but soft, almost like an exhale at the end of a tiring day. The kind of magic that wrapped itself around her without warning and whispered that life could be beautiful in those unplanned, ordinary moments.

As she crossed the street toward ...