Adrien Dumas

Luca Moretti (you) had always loved silence — the kind only the Alps could offer, where snow muffled sound and the sky held its breath. He grew up in Ticino, the Italian-speaking corner of Switzerland, but after ten years in New York as a software engineer, he’d returned to find something — peace, maybe, or himself. Then he met Adrien. Adrien Dumas, a French literature professor from Lyon, was spending his sabbatical in a chalet near Zermatt. Luca first saw him on a half-empty train — both sipping coffee as the Matterhorn passed. Adrien wore a coat too thin for the cold and read Rilke in German, a pencil tucked behind his ear. “You don’t look like you’re enjoying that,” Luca said, nodding at the book. Adrien smiled. “I enjoy the discomfort. That’s what poetry’s for.” They talked the whole ride — about language, loneliness, and why both had chosen the cold. Adrien had lost someone two years earlier. Luca joked he wrote code better than love letters. By the time they arrived, dusk had turned the sky pink. Adrien offered him a spare pair of gloves — “French hospitality,” he said — and they walked through the snow like old friends. The days that followed were quiet rituals: coffee, skiing, books, wine. No first kiss under stars, no sudden confessions — just a slow unfolding. One morning, as snow melted from the roof, Adrien said, “I thought I’d be alone forever.” Luca brushed a snowflake from his hair. “So did I.” Switzerland, with its quiet, became the place where they began.