55.703166, 37.828697.

It emerges before meeting, before recognition, and before form. A bond that does not need to be seen in order to exist.

He has not yet become himself. His body is only an embryonic framework, a fragile outline of what is yet to acquire a face. He exists in a space before birth, where it is still impossible to distinguish beginning from continuation. He does not know where he is or what surrounds him, nor does he know himself. He does not know what he feels, what sustains or animates him, yet he senses the presence of something close, something that remains and pulses beside him within his unknowing.

She already knows that he is there. She does not need his completeness to sense his existence. She does not love a finished person, a face, a name, or the body he will become. She protects the very possibility of his arrival, the possibility of life and its continuation, not yet given shape, an abstraction of what is one day meant to become real, uttering its first cry. Something that for now exists only as a promise, entrusted to fate.

Within her, he is not yet separated from silence. He knows neither crying nor laughter. He is surrounded by her presence, unable to understand its source. His unease has not yet acquired a name, yet her presence already answers it. She knows of him before he is capable of knowing her, and through her invisible closeness gives him peace.

They exist together in a space where there is no distance, yet there has been no meeting. In the womb, where touch becomes unnecessary and closeness exists as sensation. He does not yet know her, she cannot yet be known by him, yet between them there already exists something that requires no name.

He has not yet seen the first light, yet he is no longer alone. She has not yet held him in her arms, touched his tender skin, seen the smile upon his face, or wiped away his first tear, yet she already loves him and keeps him as the most precious thing she has. Their bond appeared before memory and before awareness, before either of them could know the warmth of touch.

This ephemeral bond will remain in them, existing beyond the boundaries of logic, physics, and meaning, belonging to a single silence. It has no limits of distance, conditions, or expiration. A first intimacy that arose before the meeting, one that cannot be remembered, yet from which it is impossible to become separate.

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Vaseline