It was a golden hour in Belgrade, the kind that bathed Knez Mihailova Street in warm light and made the world slow down. Miloš was walking without a destination, hands in his pockets, heart restless for something he couldn’t name. That’s when he saw her.
She moved through the crowd like a flame — a young Romani woman in a flowing red dress, big golden earrings catching the sun, her dark eyes full of stories. She laughed as she walked, and the sound stopped Miloš in his tracks.
He didn’t speak to her that day. Not then. But he saw her again — by the riverbank, under the treetops of an old, gnarled oak, where the Danube whispered to the shore. Her name was Ajna.
They talked for hours those nights, lying on the grass, the city distant and irrelevant. Ajna told him about her dreams of dancing in faraway cities, of escaping the cages others tried to build around her. Miloš told her about books, about music, about how he had never felt so alive until he met her.
But Belgrade is not always kind to love that crosses boundaries.
Ajna’s younger sister, only a child, let the secret slip — her sister, in love with a gadjo. Whispers turned into loud voices. Her parents, proud and rooted in old ways, forbade her from seeing Miloš again. They arranged for her to marry Emir, a wealthy Romani man with horses and cold eyes. The wedding was planned before Ajna could catch her breath.
Miloš was heartbroken. For a while, he tried to fight. He sent her letters, waited at their tree by the river, but she never came.
Time passed. People move on — or pretend to.
He started dating Persa, a girl next door. She said all the right things and never caused trouble. But she didn’t laugh like Ajna, didn’t dream like Ajna. Miloš found himself staring out the window often, remembering the rustle of leaves above them, the way Ajna would dance barefoot in the moonlight, not caring who watched.
Then one day, Miloš found out Persa had been seeing someone else. He wasn’t even angry. Just tired.
And somewhere in another part of the city, Ajna sat in a room full of silk and silence. Emir traveled often, and she was left alone with her memories. Sometimes, she would slip out to the river, stand under their old tree, and let the wind tangle her hair. She could almost hear Miloš laughing beside her.
They never met again. But in the quiet moments, when the world was still, they both found their way back — to the river, to the treetops, to the echo of a love that once burned bright under a red dress and golden earrings.
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Story written by an AI software, according to my imagination.