Isla Verma
The Letter in the Book
It was a Sunday shaped like rain. The city hadn’t yet decided if it wanted to pour or pretend, and Anaya stood under the torn yellow canopy of a second-hand bookstall near Churchgate, letting her fingers glide across spines of the forgotten. The old man who ran the stall smoked a cigarette with one hand and flipped through pages with the other, not even looking up as she pulled a faded copy of Wuthering Heights from the stack.
The pages were frayed at the edges, browned like toast. Anaya loved that. She liked her books like her tea — steeped long, almost burnt, full of stories no one remembered to finish. She opened the cover. The price penciled inside — ₹50. Her thumb brushed something uneven near the back. She flipped through. A folded sheet, soft as breath, lay between pages 213 and 214.
She paused. Looked at the stall owner. He didn’t notice. She slipped the letter into her tote and bought the book anyway. No haggling. No conversation.
It was only later, curled in the dry safety of her fourth-floor flat in Bandra, that she unfolded the paper. The handwriting was looping, cursive, elegant — the kind that made you think of boarding schools, wax seals, and a time when words were meant to be carried, not clicked. The ink had bled slightly, like it had crossed oceans or survived winters.
April 12, 2018
Dearest,
I was going to post this to you, but the sea had other plans. I found myself unable to walk to the mailbox. Cowardice, maybe. Or hope — that you’d someday find it anyway.
Do you remember the night it snowed in April? We lay by the fire and made up stories about whales swimming under frozen lochs, waiting for the world to thaw. You fell asleep mid-sentence. I watched you breathing and thought: I could love this person forever. That terrifies me more than it should.
You once said love is a kind of migration — a slow flight toward another’s silence. I’ve begun to think you were right. You were always more poet than scientist.
There are days I believe I’ll see you again. And others when I know this letter is my last word. Whichever it is — thank you for all of it.
Yours,
C. Fraser
No address. No “Dear” name. Just the aching echo of a life lived far away.
Anaya read it twice. Three times. Then set it on her windowsill beside her hibiscus pot and stared out at the monsoon-heavy sky. The city blurred and buzzed below. Somewhere, a train passed, screeching metal into the air like a protest.
She should have stopped there. Let it be a mystery. But her heart had a habit of clinging to beautiful things — broken mugs, chipped vinyls, stray dogs, almost-love stories. She opened her laptop and typed into the search bar: C. Fraser Isle of Skye marine biology.
It was ridiculous. Foolish. Romantic in the most embarrassing way. But on the third link, she found an article: “Tides and Tempests: Dr. Callum Fraser on Ocean Memory.” Published in 2020. Photo attached — a man in his early thirties, salt-rimmed hair, pale green eyes, smile like someone who had known grief and stayed soft.
There was an institute name. A mailing address in Skye.
Anaya hesitated. Then began to write.
April 6, 2025
Dear Dr. Fraser (I think?),
I found a letter tucked inside an old book in Mumbai. I think you wrote it. Or someone who sounds very much like you. It was unsigned, unfinished, and impossibly beautiful.
I don’t know who the ‘Dearest’ was. But it moved me. I’m writing not to intrude but to say: your words found someone, after all.
And maybe — that’s enough.
Warmly,
Anaya Deshmukh
She read it aloud. Twice. Printed it. Folded it into a pale blue envelope and walked to the postbox near the church at the end of the lane. It was still raining. She dropped the letter in, heart thumping like she’d confessed something she didn’t yet understand.
For the next week, she tried to forget it.
She went to work. Read manuscripts. Edited a debut novel about time-traveling astronauts in love. Watered her plants. Ignored the little thrill every time her Gmail refreshed.
And then, nine days later, an email arrived.
Subject: The Letter Found Its Way
From: c.fraser@tidalobservatory.org.uk
To: anaya.deshmukh@gmail.com
Dear Anaya,
I don’t quite know how to begin. Yes — the letter was mine. I never posted it. I left it inside that book when I gave it away years ago during a stormy, sleepless night. I never thought anyone would read it, let alone reply.
You must think me terribly dramatic. I was. Still am, I suppose. The person I wrote it to — she left. Quietly. Decisively. The kind of departure that feels like a door closing in the middle of a sentence.
Thank you for writing to me. You didn’t have to. But you did. And that feels strangely like something important.
If you’re willing — I’d like to write back.
Yours sincerely,
Callum Fraser
Anaya stared at the screen. The window beside her hummed with wind. The letter on the sill fluttered.
She smiled. Just a little. Just enough.
Reply to Nowhere
She didn’t reply right away.
Anaya read his email in the soft quiet of midnight, the kind of hour when things lose their shape and emotions slip past reason. The screen glowed in the dark, casting her face in a bluish hue as if she were sitting before a lighthouse, not a MacBook. She reread Callum’s words, slower this time, and imagined the man who’d once folded a letter into a forgotten book now hunched over a desk on some storm-battered Scottish isle, waiting for her next word.
It was absurd. They were strangers. Strangers bound only by a letter and a kind of ache.
And yet.
That night, sleep did not come easily. She kept hearing his phrase: a door closing in the middle of a sentence. It echoed in her chest like a sound she recognized too well.
Three years ago, Aditya had ended their engagement by simply stopping — no fights, no tears, just a text on a Monday morning saying, I don’t think this is working anymore. And that was it. No reply to her calls. No closure. Just the hollow after of someone vanishing mid-sentence. She had packed up her old life in Pune and moved to Mumbai soon after. No more shared leases. No more shared plans.
No more beginnings.
Until now, perhaps.
She finally replied two days later. The sun was high. Her plants were bathed in gold. It felt less dangerous to write when light poured in.
Subject: Against the Odds
From: anaya.deshmukh@gmail.com
To: c.fraser@tidalobservatory.org.uk
Dear Callum,
I don’t think you sound dramatic. Or maybe you do — but the good kind. The kind that makes people feel, not flee.
Thank you for writing back. I half-expected silence. I don’t quite know why I wrote you, to be honest. The letter moved me, yes — but maybe I was also searching for something I didn’t want to admit to.
You wrote to someone who left. I once loved someone who vanished. A text ended everything. No storms. Just absence.
It’s strange, isn’t it, how people become memories overnight?
Anyway. I’d like to write too. If you’d like to keep going.
Maybe we don’t need to know each other to understand each other. Or maybe that’s just another one of my untested theories.
Warmly,
Anaya
She didn’t wait for an answer, but checked her inbox twice before dinner and three times before bed. It wasn’t love. Not yet. But it was a thread — and in a world full of noise, a thread was enough to hold on to.
The next morning, his reply arrived like rain tapping on glass.
Subject: The Sound of Whales
From: c.fraser@tidalobservatory.org.uk
To: anaya.deshmukh@gmail.com
Anaya,
I didn’t expect your reply, and now I’m re-reading it like a song I didn’t know I needed. I’m sorry for what happened. Vanishing is crueler than anger, I think. Anger at least speaks. Silence feels like betrayal whispered into eternity.
You asked if we could keep writing. I’d like that. There’s something about this — about you — that feels… restorative.
Today, the sea was kind. I saw a pod of orcas in the bay. One of them lifted its fin like a wave. I thought of your letter then. Thought of how words can cross oceans better than most boats.
What was the last thing that made you laugh, Anaya? Not smile — laugh? I think that says a lot about a person.
Yours from across the sea,
Callum
Anaya exhaled. Then laughed — for real this time.
It became a rhythm. Not daily, but frequent enough to matter. Letters flew like birds — sometimes long, sometimes just a few lines. They wrote about small things: how Anaya once chased a pigeon out of her living room with a rolled-up yoga mat, how Callum liked to eat cold toast with sea salt and butter, how both of them hated loud clocks.
They also wrote about the big things: the deaths they hadn’t processed, the friendships that had frayed, the books that broke their hearts in beautiful ways. The distance made it easier — as if confession belonged more to silence than to speech.
One night, after reading his note about his mother — how she’d loved making lemon curd and would hum Sade songs while doing it — Anaya placed her laptop aside and lay still. She hadn’t told anyone about her father in years. Not since his sudden stroke the week before her graduation. Not since she’d missed his last call.
She wrote back that same night. Wrote everything. The guilt. The what-ifs. The way she still dialed his number in moments of panic and then watched the This number is no longer in service message blink on the screen like a wound.
Callum didn’t reply for two days. On the third morning, a parcel arrived.
A jar of lemon curd.
No note. Just the jar and a sticker: Fraser’s Kitchen.
Her eyes welled up in the kitchen as she opened it. It smelled like sunlight.
She sent a voice note instead of a letter.
“Callum… I don’t know what to say. I didn’t expect—thank you. It tastes like memory. Like something gentle.”
She paused. Then added, “You’re a stranger I don’t want to lose.”
He replied the same way.
“I don’t want to be a stranger much longer.”
Then quieter,
“Come to Skye someday. If only to see the whales.”
Anaya closed her eyes. For a moment, the apartment disappeared. She heard water. Wind. The possibility of something unnamed blooming across miles.
A Letter from Skye
There are letters that arrive like weather. Not sudden, but shifting — you feel them before they reach you. The air thickens. Time slows. You sense something is about to change. That’s how Anaya felt on the morning Callum’s letter arrived by post, the old-fashioned kind.
It was a thick cream envelope, edges soft with travel, bearing a red Royal Mail stamp and her name in ink as elegant as the one in the book. Her heart quickened. She hadn’t received a handwritten letter in years.
She held it like one might hold a relic — something too rare to touch casually — then carefully peeled it open with the edge of a house key. Inside was four pages of blue ink and salt-smudged words. The envelope smelled faintly of sea air and coffee.
Anaya,
I’ve written to you dozens of times over email, and yet this letter feels different. More deliberate. The sound of pen against paper makes me aware of each word, each pause. I suppose this is what writing to you has done — made me aware of myself again.
I’m writing this from the cliff behind my cottage. There’s a bench here, old and crooked, where I sit to watch the tide. Below me, the sea roars like a hungry animal, but it soothes me. It always has. You’d laugh at my view right now — grey skies, angry waves, and a lone sheep standing like a poet brooding over life.
I keep thinking of your voice note. You said I tasted like memory. That’s stayed with me. We don’t say things like that to people we barely know. But maybe we’re not strangers anymore.
You asked once what my worst fear is. I didn’t answer then. I’ll try now.
I’m afraid of stillness. Not the quiet kind, but the kind that settles in your bones — the kind that makes people drift into lives they never wanted. I stayed here after Mum died not because I loved it, but because I was too broken to choose anything else. Until you wrote.
You woke something up. Something good. Thank you.
Come here someday. There’s a room at the inn. Or better yet — stay here. The couch pulls out. I’ll feed you terrible toast and lemon curd.
Yours from the northern edge,
Callum
Anaya folded the letter slowly, heart full and fragile.
That evening, Mumbai was wrapped in fog. She sat on her balcony with a shawl and a glass of Merlot, watching the streetlights blink through the mist. A part of her was terrified. Letters had always been safer than people. You could choose your words, edit your honesty, stay hidden behind beautiful metaphors. But Callum’s letter felt like a knock on the door — a real one. The kind you had to answer.
She hadn’t told anyone about him yet. Not Niyati, her oldest friend, not her editor at the publishing house, not even her own mother, who had recently begun dropping hints about “marriageable age” and “settling down.” She kept him like a secret between her and the stars — luminous, unlikely, and too delicate to explain.
She drafted a reply by hand. Then crumpled it. Then tried again.
April 22, 2025
Dear Callum,
You’re right. This feels different. I bought a pen just to write this — the kind with blue-black ink that stains your fingers but makes you feel like someone important. Or at least, someone who still believes in the romance of words.
Your cliff bench sounds like something out of a story. I can almost see it — the sheep, the sky, the loneliness that isn’t really lonely.
I think I’m scared too. But of the opposite. I’m scared of moving too fast. Of letting someone in before I’m sure the floor beneath me isn’t about to collapse.
But you’ve been patient. And kind. And so unlike the city I live in, where everything rushes, everything sells itself before it’s ready. You — you feel like a pause I didn’t know I needed.
I want to write you poetry, but I’m rusty. So here’s a question instead:
What would you cook for me if I showed up tomorrow? And don’t say toast.
Always,
Anaya
She posted it the next morning and smiled the entire walk home.
What followed was a new kind of rhythm — email some days, real letters other days. Each envelope from Skye brought with it a photograph, a feather, a pressed leaf, a note scribbled in the margin of a map. He sent her a pebble shaped like a comma. She mailed him a tiny sketch of the Bombay skyline drawn on the back of a bookstore receipt.
They were building a world.
Then, one morning, Anaya woke up to an email that was just two lines long.
What if I flew to Mumbai in June? Just for a week.
Would that be alright?
Her breath caught.
She stared at the screen for ten full minutes. Then typed a reply. Erased it. Typed again.
Yes. Come. The couch pulls out.
And I make a terrible cup of chai. But I’ll try for you.
She hit send before she could regret it.
Begin Again
He arrived on a Thursday afternoon, wearing linen, holding a bouquet of tulips that had wilted slightly in the Mumbai heat, and smiling like he wasn’t sure if this was still a dream. Anaya stood at the arrival gate in Terminal 2, fingers trembling against her phone screen, trying to recognize a face she had only known through pixels and pen strokes.
He saw her first. Walked up slowly, eyes soft, unsure, and then offered the bouquet like a question.
“I wasn’t sure if tulips were too much,” he said, breathlessly British, voice lower than she’d imagined, but warmer too. “I Googled ‘flowers that don’t die on airplanes.’ Not very successful, I’m afraid.”
Anaya took the bouquet. “They’re perfect,” she said. “So are you.”
He laughed then — short, sheepish, utterly human — and in that moment, all the distance they had written across melted into something real.
Her flat felt smaller with him in it. Not claustrophobic — just fuller. He ducked slightly when walking through doorways. His suitcase, predictably, was filled with paperbacks, socks, and loose tea. He insisted on sleeping on the pull-out couch, despite her protests.
“You have a job,” he said. “I have vacation. Let me earn my keep.”
So he brewed her morning coffee in her chipped French press, added precisely one and a half teaspoons of sugar the way she liked. He refilled her fridge with citrus and yoghurt and even found a fish market nearby that delivered on WhatsApp. The first evening, he made lemon-butter salmon with cracked pepper and played Fleetwood Mac on his phone while he cooked. Anaya leaned against the kitchen doorframe, watching him dance with the spatula.
“You look like you belong here,” she said.
“I feel like I don’t want to leave,” he replied, without looking up.
They didn’t go to the Gateway or the Elephanta caves. He didn’t ask for selfies by Marine Drive or sunset strolls on Juhu beach. Instead, they stayed in the margins of the city — bookstores in Fort, cafés in Kala Ghoda, long walks past old buildings that wore their history like secrets. He asked questions about the art on the walls, the names of stray dogs, the origin of each spice in his meal.
She took him to her favorite temple under the banyan tree, then to her childhood home, still preserved like a museum of someone else’s life. Her mother welcomed him with awkward grace, served him over-sweet halwa and asked, “You two are just… friends?”
Callum smiled. “Friends who write letters, ma’am.”
That night, Anaya lay on the couch beside him. Neither spoke for a long time.
“Do you miss the sea?” she asked.
“Only when I forget where I am,” he said. “Right now, I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
She turned on her side and reached for his hand. No grand declaration. Just skin brushing skin.
It was enough.
But real things have sharp edges. On the fifth day, a call came. His research station had been hit by an unexpected storm. Power lines down. Equipment damaged. He’d have to shorten his trip. Return two days earlier than planned.
Anaya stood by the window while he spoke on the phone, her arms folded tightly, as if holding herself was easier than holding on to him. When he hung up, he didn’t say anything. Just sat beside her and exhaled.
“I hate this,” he whispered.
“So do I,” she said.
“But this doesn’t have to be the end.”
She nodded, blinking fast. “No. But it’s a kind of beginning, isn’t it?”
He turned to her then, eyes tired but full of something steady.
“I didn’t come here to be a tourist in your life,” he said. “I came because you made me feel seen. Not the version I pretend to be for work or family or old friends — but the real one. The quiet one. I want to know what your Mondays feel like. I want to fight with you about what kind of bread to buy. I want to learn the names of your sadnesses.”
She touched his face. “You’re not a stranger anymore.”
“And you’re not a comma anymore,” he said. “You’re the sentence I never knew I needed to finish.”
They kissed then — soft, unhurried, like two people who had waited too long to rush.
He left on a Tuesday. The goodbye was not cinematic. No airport tears. No dramatic running. Just two people holding each other tightly beside Gate 34A, promising more.
“I’ll write,” he said.
“I’ll reply,” she said.
They touched foreheads like punctuation. Then he was gone.
The flat was quiet again. The coffee was wrong. The light felt too blue. But the bed still smelled of his shampoo, and the books he’d rearranged on her shelf still carried his logic.
She found a note tucked inside her pillowcase.
Anaya,
This was not a visit. This was me crossing over.
To your side of the world. To your side of the heart.
I’ll write again. But this time, I hope I won’t have to say goodbye at the end.
Yours in everything,
Callum
What We Don’t Say
June melted into July like ink bleeding on wet paper. The monsoon stayed longer than forecast, pouring down in waves as if the skies themselves were trying to hold something back. Anaya sat by the window most evenings, her fingers curled around cups of tea she never finished, watching the city ripple and run.
Callum wrote every day after returning to Skye — sometimes long letters, sometimes short notes, always beginning with My Anaya, like she was no longer just a person, but a place.
But there were things unsaid. Not because they weren’t important, but because they sat too close to the chest. Truths that hadn’t yet found the courage to be spoken aloud.
She hadn’t told him about the promotion she turned down. The one that would have taken her to Bangalore, to a higher pay, a bigger title, and a flat with floor-to-ceiling windows. She hadn’t told him because she didn’t know how to explain that her heart had shifted north, toward a letter-shaped life.
He hadn’t told her about the grant application he’d just submitted — one that, if approved, would fund a three-year project in New Zealand. Three years on boats, tagging whales, mapping ocean currents, far from Scotland and farther still from India.
They were both holding their breaths in different corners of the world, smiling through words, building a bridge made of delay.
One night, Anaya sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor with a half-empty bottle of red and her laptop open to Callum’s latest email.
Today I saw a puffin land on the roof. Just stood there, staring at me. Like it knew something I didn’t. Maybe you sent it. Maybe it’s your spy.
Also, I’ve run out of your masala chai. The supermarket version tastes like regret.
Is it silly that I miss your silence? Even that was warmer than most conversations I have here.
Tell me something honest. Anything.
Love,
C.
She stared at the screen for a long time. Then began typing.
Subject: Re: Puffins and Truth
From: Anaya Deshmukh
To: Callum Fraser
Okay. Something honest.
Some days I want to pack a suitcase and fly to you without telling anyone. I imagine us living in that little white cottage with the crooked fence and a dog named Eliot who sleeps between us.
But then I remember who I am — the woman who still keeps her phone on silent because she can’t stand being startled, who triple-checks locks and plans escape routes from second-floor windows.
I want to say I’m brave enough. But I’m not there yet. I’m trying.
Is that enough for now?
She hesitated. Then typed one more line.
I love you. I haven’t said it before. But I do.
She hit send before fear could erase it.
The reply came twelve hours later.
Subject: Re: Something Honest
From: Callum Fraser
To: Anaya Deshmukh
I’ve been wanting to say it since the day your letter reached me.
I love you too. Loudly. Quietly. Even from this far.
And you are brave.
Also… I need to tell you something.
Anaya’s stomach dropped. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She didn’t reply. Not yet.
Two days passed. Three. She kept rereading his last line like it was a riddle. “I need to tell you something.” It could mean anything. Everything. The kind of sentence that makes the earth shift beneath your feet.
When the letter came — not an email this time — it was postmarked from Glasgow, not Skye. Inside was a folded page with his handwriting slightly rushed, almost anxious.
Anaya,
You deserve the whole truth.
I applied for a research position in New Zealand before I ever met you — before your letter found me. I didn’t think I’d get it. I just wanted something to pull me out of stillness.
Now it’s real. They approved it. It’s a dream job. Three years. Boats. Whales. Water everywhere.
But suddenly, I’m not sure I want it.
Because the world I want now has your name written across it.
Say something. Anything. Even if it’s goodbye.
Love,
C.
She read the letter twice. Then a third time.
The rain outside had stopped. A sparrow landed on the balcony railing and blinked at her as if waiting for her answer.
She picked up a pen.
Dear Callum,
Three years is not forever. And if this is what you’ve dreamed of, you must go.
But come back to me after. Or let me come to you.
Because the world I want has your laugh in the kitchen, your socks on my floor, your hand brushing mine when neither of us is looking.
This is not goodbye. This is just a comma.
Love,
Anaya
She posted it the next morning.
Then sat by the window and waited — not for a reply, but for the world to rearrange itself gently around this truth.
Echoes of the Past
Anaya hadn’t spoken to Aditya in over two years. Not since he disappeared with a half-sentence and a cold click. But life, in its quiet mischief, has a way of bending time into circles, not lines.
It was a Sunday afternoon when he called — an unknown number flashing on her phone, a voice she hadn’t prepared for slipping into her ears like déjà vu.
“Anaya?”
She froze. The sound of his name, even unspoken, flooded her limbs like ice.
“Yeah. It’s me. Aditya.”
She said nothing.
“I… saw your photo in that publishing feature. The interview about debut authors. You looked… happy.”
He paused. “I didn’t know who else to tell. My mother passed away last week.”
The news struck her like a sharp breath — not for grief, but for the memory of once having been part of a world that included his mother, her warm rasam and soft voice, Sunday lunches and cotton saris.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, voice flat. “But I’m not sure why you’re calling me now.”
“I don’t know either,” he admitted. “I think I just missed the version of me that existed when you loved me.”
She stared out the window. The trees were dancing in a restless wind.
“Closure,” he said softly, as if reading her silence. “I wanted to say sorry. For how I left. You didn’t deserve that.”
She could have hung up. Could have told him it was too late. But she didn’t. Instead, she said, “People don’t disappear. They just choose not to look back.”
“I look back now,” he said. “Too often.”
After the call, she didn’t cry. She didn’t text Callum either. She sat on her bed with a blanket around her shoulders, listening to the fan spin, and thought about how strange it was that love could shrink someone so large into just a line in a story.
She hadn’t thought of Aditya in months. But now his voice was lodged somewhere in the quiet corners of her mind — not as temptation, but as a shadow that used to follow her. She’d stopped fearing it. But shadows returned when the light changed.
Callum’s next letter arrived with a pressed daisy inside. It smelled faintly of salt and soap and held no mention of New Zealand.
My Anaya,
The night is loud here. Waves crashing like applause, the wind screaming in Gaelic. I haven’t accepted the offer yet. It’s strange — I spent years wanting to leave, and now the thought of leaving you feels more terrifying than staying still.
You are the adventure now. That doesn’t mean I won’t go. But I want to go knowing you’re walking beside me — even if it’s in words, until it’s in footsteps.
Say you’re not afraid.
Say we can still begin, even with old endings haunting the edges.
Yours,
C.
She replied the same night.
I spoke to someone from my past. Someone who once broke me so quietly I mistook the silence for healing.
But after the call, I didn’t shatter. I didn’t reach for old versions of myself. Instead, I reached for you. Your voice in my head, your scent in the pillow.
So no, I’m not afraid.
Yes, we can begin again. And again. As many times as we need.
But if you go — take me with you. Even if it’s just as a thought at first. I’ll follow when the time is right.
Love,
Anaya
Two weeks later, Callum confirmed his departure date. October 5th. A new continent, a new coastline. He didn’t frame it as leaving. He framed it as moving forward.
And Anaya, surprisingly, didn’t panic.
Instead, she applied for a six-month remote editorship with a small literary magazine based in Delhi. They approved her in four days.
Then she booked a ticket to Auckland. February. Round-trip, with a flexible return date.
When she told Callum, he replied within minutes.
Bring warm socks. And a heart that’s ready.
Everything else we’ll figure out together.
Her last walk through Mumbai before departure was quiet. She walked past the bookstore stall where she’d first found the letter — now run by a young boy in headphones who didn’t even glance at her.
She bought a book anyway. Not Wuthering Heights this time, but Letters to a Young Poet. It felt right.
That night, she packed her bags with deliberate slowness. Her hibiscus plant had been left in Niyati’s care. Her favorite books were stacked neatly by the window. The city, for now, would wait.
She wrote one last letter before her flight. Left it in a café near the sea, tucked inside the cover of a novel by a local poet.
Dear Stranger,
If you find this, it means you believe in accidents. In stories hidden between chapters. I found love because of a letter. You might too.
Write something. Say something. Let it begin.
Because somewhere, someone is waiting for a word that only you can write.
She smiled as she walked out.
Rain began to fall gently — not loud, not furious — just enough to soften the air.
Enough to remind her that every ending, if held gently, can become a beginning again.
The Proposal
Auckland was a city shaped by water and wind, sharp with light, soft with absence. For Anaya, it felt both alien and oddly familiar — like stepping into a version of herself that had always existed just beyond reach. She arrived in February with two suitcases, a journal, and the scent of lemon curd tucked in memory. Callum met her at the airport wearing a navy raincoat and holding a sign that said “Letter Girl.”
She laughed, startled by how much he looked like home.
“You came,” he said, as if he hadn’t truly believed it until now.
“I told you I would,” she whispered. “You just had to wait for me to find the right comma.”
They moved into a small cottage outside the city — a rented place with floorboards that creaked and curtains that never quite closed. It had no dishwasher, no central heating, but the windows opened to a wide field where cows sometimes wandered, and at night, the stars stitched stories across the ceiling.
It was supposed to be temporary.
Six months. A trial.
But time slipped between them like silk. Days were made of tea and toast, grocery runs and letters still written by hand. Callum taught her how to cook with coriander. She taught him how to argue in silence, how to forgive without words. They read to each other before bed. Some nights, she fell asleep mid-sentence and woke up to find her book closed, her head resting on his chest, his heartbeat slow and steady like punctuation.
It was a kind of peace Anaya hadn’t known she could want.
And yet, in the soft ache of quiet, fear waited like a coat never quite hung.
By late June, Callum’s work consumed his hours. He was often gone before sunrise, returning with ocean spray on his collar, salt in his hair. He talked about whale migrations and sonar disruptions, the politics of funding and the romance of plankton.
Anaya smiled, nodded, listened. But something inside her stirred.
She’d begun drafting a novel. A loose, lyrical thing. Letters woven between two continents. A love story, of course. But also a map — of distance, of silence, of longing folded into paper. It was slow work. Some days, she couldn’t write at all. Other days, the words poured like confessions.
One evening, after a long silence over dinner, Callum asked, “Are you happy here?”
She looked up. “Yes. But I’m also scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of building something beautiful in a place where you’ll eventually leave.”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he poured her more wine and said, “I won’t ask you to stay forever. But I don’t want to say goodbye again.”
She nodded. “Neither do I.”
But the sentence didn’t feel finished.
On a Tuesday afternoon, he left a note on her writing desk. Not an email. Not a text.
Just paper. Ink. Him.
Anaya,
You once said love is a kind of migration — a slow flight toward another’s silence.
You’ve been flying toward mine with such grace that I’ve forgotten how to be afraid of stillness.
So here’s my question:
Will you stay longer? Not just in this city, or this cottage, or this chapter — but in all the ones I haven’t written yet?
Will you marry me?
Say yes. Or say maybe. Or say let me think about it. But don’t say goodbye.
I love you. Without footnotes, without disclaimers, without pause.
— C.
She stared at the note for a long time. Then walked to the window.
The wind had picked up. A storm threatened the horizon. Somewhere, far off, thunder murmured like a memory.
Anaya folded the letter. Placed it in her pocket.
And walked out into the rain
She found him by the coast, pacing with his hands in his jacket pockets, eyes scanning the water like it held all the answers he was too afraid to voice.
She didn’t speak right away. Just walked up and stood beside him, their shoulders brushing in that accidental way that always made her feel more certain.
“You didn’t have to write it,” she said quietly. “You could’ve just asked.”
“I didn’t want to ruin it by saying it wrong.”
“You didn’t.”
She reached into her coat, pulled out the letter, now slightly damp from her walk.
Then handed him a page torn from her journal.
Dear C,
Yes.
But not because I need the title or the ceremony or the promise sealed by witnesses.
Yes — because I want to build days with you. Quiet ones, loud ones, confused ones. Days where we fold laundry and argue over playlists. Days where we forget to water plants. Days where we write letters even though we live in the same house.
Yes, because you are the sentence I choose again and again.
Yours,
A.
He smiled. Said nothing. Just pulled her into him and kissed her like a comma folding into a full stop.
Later that night, as thunder cracked like applause and the windows shook in their frames, Anaya lay beside him, listening to his breath slow, her head tucked into the crook of his shoulder.
“Still scared?” he whispered.
She thought for a moment.
“Always,” she said. “But now I know — fear doesn’t mean don’t. It just means love is real.”
Silence in the Inbox
Three months before their wedding, Callum vanished.
Not physically — his clothes still hung in the wardrobe, his boots still leaned against the door, his half-read copy of The Overstory still rested beside Anaya’s pillow.
But something in him folded inward, went quiet. The sparkle in his sentences dulled. He stopped writing her morning notes, stopped humming in the kitchen, stopped reaching for her hand as they crossed the street.
At first, Anaya thought it was exhaustion. His research team had lost funding. Meetings stretched past midnight. Emails buzzed like hornets. Still, she waited.
Then came the silence.
No “good morning,” no “be back soon.” Just longer absences and shorter words.
She tried once, twice, five times to ask what was wrong. He smiled. Said, “Just work.”
But love sharpens the senses. She knew the difference between tired and distant.
Then, one day, he was gone.
It was a Thursday. She came home from the market with turmeric and jasmine tea. The front door was locked. A note lay on the kitchen table, scribbled hastily.
Need time. Going north. Will call. Don’t wait up.
That was it.
No name. No punctuation. No Love, C.
Just five words and a silence that swallowed her whole.
The first day, she stared at the note like it was a puzzle missing its corner.
The second day, she reread their old letters.
The third, she stopped opening her inbox.
By the fifth, her phone had no new calls, and her eyes stung from not crying.
Niyati called from Delhi.
“Are you okay?”
Anaya didn’t know how to answer.
“He’s just… gone.”
“You mean left?”
“No,” she said. “Just… disappeared inside himself.”
“What will you do?”
“Wait,” Anaya said, though she wasn’t sure if that was bravery or self-betrayal.
In the silence, she remembered Bombay. Rain on her balcony, the broken clocks, the long commutes alone. She remembered the first letter. The scent of old paper. The thrill of words that found her before the man did.
Callum hadn’t been a destination. He had been the journey back to herself. And maybe that was why this abandonment hurt deeper — not because she couldn’t survive it, but because it questioned everything she thought they’d built.
Still, she didn’t call him.
Not once.
If he needed space, she’d give it.
But some part of her also needed to see if he would choose to return.
Not out of guilt. Not out of habit.
But out of love.
Weeks passed.
She cooked for one. Slept alone. Listened to the house creak and stretch as if it too was waiting.
Then, one morning, she opened her laptop to find a new email.
Subject line: Letter 101.
Her chest tightened.
She clicked.
Anaya,
I tried to write you ten times and failed each time.
I went north to a cabin by the Kaikoura coast. I watched whales breach and fall, over and over. I watched their silence speak louder than their movements. And I thought of you.
I left because I was afraid.
Afraid of the way you love me — wholly, wisely, without flinch. Afraid of what it means to be loved that well. I’ve only known love that disappears when it’s inconvenient.
I left because I didn’t think I deserved to stay.
But I want to come back now. Not with perfect words or tidy apologies. Just with truth.
If you’ll have me.
Love always,
C.
She didn’t reply immediately.
Instead, she walked to the beach at dusk and let the wind slap her cheeks pink. She listened to the waves, to the gulls, to the rush of something larger than pain.
Then she returned home.
Opened a blank page.
And began to write.
Subject: Reply 101
From: Anaya Deshmukh
To: Callum Fraser
Dear C,
I’m glad the whales were loud. I’m glad the sky was wide enough for you to hear yourself.
But here’s the thing: I don’t love you because you stayed. I love you because you were brave enough to return.
We’re all made of silences. Yours. Mine. Our fathers’. Our lovers’. What matters is what we do when we hear them echo back.
I’m still here. The couch still pulls out. The kettle still whistles at 6 a.m. The jasmine tea’s gone bitter, but you can fix that.
Come home, C.
We’ll begin again.
That night, she slept with the windows open.
Let the wind in.
Let hope sit quietly beside her.
A Flight, A Fog, A Doorbell
The fog came before he did.
Thick, rolling, white — it blanketed the hills like a secret. Anaya stood by the window, arms folded, breath fogging the glass, wondering if it was a sign or a delay. The clock ticked with irritating precision. Her inbox was silent. Her phone lay untouched on the table, as if waiting for a prophecy.
She hadn’t told anyone he was coming.
Not Niyati. Not her editor. Not even the neighbour who asked twice why she was baking banana bread at 8 a.m.
Callum’s last message had been brief: Boarding in 20. Touchdown in 13 hours. If fog doesn’t eat the plane.
That was twelve hours ago.
She didn’t know if he’d show up.
She also didn’t know what she’d say if he did.
The bell rang at 8:47 p.m.
Not once. Twice. Short and uncertain. Not like a lover. More like a guest.
Anaya didn’t move immediately. Her feet were cold on the wooden floor. Her heart louder than the television playing in the background. Then she walked — slow, deliberate — to the door and opened it.
There he stood. Hair damp from mist, suitcase in one hand, flowers in the other — blue hydrangeas this time, wild, uneven, half-crushed from the journey. He looked tired. Older. Real.
“I wasn’t sure if I should ring the bell or write a letter first,” he said.
Anaya smiled — a quiet curve, not dramatic, but deep.
“You came.”
“I never really left.”
She stepped aside. He walked in The house hadn’t changed. The smell of eucalyptus oil lingered. His coat still hung on the back of the dining chair. On the counter, the banana bread cooled under a cotton napkin. He reached out, touched it.
“Still baking your nervous thoughts, I see.”
She shrugged. “Better than burning them.”
He turned. Met her eyes. “Can I stay?”
“That depends,” she said. “Are you going to leave again when it gets hard?”
“No,” he said. “But I might still be scared.”
“Good,” she replied. “That’s how we know it’s real.”
Later, they sat on the floor like students after class — legs crossed, mugs in hand, the fog pressing its nose against the windows.
Callum leaned against the wall.
“When I was up north,” he said, “there were these seabirds. Gannets. They dive from forty feet high — straight into the water. Blind faith. No flinch. Just instinct.”
“Are you saying you’re a bird now?”
“I’m saying I’ve spent most of my life hovering above the water. Afraid to dive. Even when I knew what I wanted.”
She sipped her tea. “And what do you want now?”
“You,” he said. “All of it. The mornings and the migraines. The silences. The letters. Even the banana bread that tastes like forgotten flour.”
She raised an eyebrow. “It’s not that bad.”
He grinned. “I’d still eat it every day.”
That night, they lay in bed with the windows cracked open, fog slipping in like a gentle witness.
“Tell me something true,” she whispered, her cheek against his collarbone.
He hesitated. Then: “When I’m with you, I forget how lonely I’ve been all my life.”
She didn’t answer. Just pulled the blanket up to his shoulder and curled into his chest.
They didn’t speak again until morning.
The next day, she found a letter on her desk.
No envelope. No stamp. Just folded paper and his unmistakable scrawl.
Anaya,
Coming back was not the apology.
This is.
For the silences that weren’t gentle. For the days I closed the door without telling you why. For choosing fear over love when you’d given me nothing but grace.
I don’t want to be the man who writes beautiful things but can’t live them. I want to be the man who stays when the dishes pile up, when your eyes are tired, when your laugh doesn’t come easy.
Let’s be boring. Let’s be quiet. Let’s be safe.
Marry me. Not because we planned it. But because we survived ourselves long enough to know we still want each other.
If your answer’s still yes, I’ll be in the kitchen. Making toast.
With love and crumbs,
C.
She read it twice. Then walked into the kitchen.
He was standing barefoot, buttering toast, the morning sun kissing the edge of his stubble.
She didn’t say anything.
Just walked up, took the butter knife from his hand, and kissed him.
Long. Slow. Certain.
“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth. “Still yes.”
A Hundred Letters North
The wedding was small.
Not because they wanted it to be, but because anything larger felt dishonest. They married under a crooked fig tree in the garden behind their cottage, with just six guests — Niyati flew in from Delhi wearing a lemon-yellow saree and sunglasses too big for the sky; Callum’s mentor from Skye wore a brown tweed coat and cried the whole time.
They wrote their own vows on recycled paper and sealed them with silence instead of rings.
Callum’s began, “You were never just a letter. You were the page the ink needed.”
Anaya’s ended with, “I don’t promise perfect. I promise presence.”
There was no DJ. Just a playlist called Sky Letters on a borrowed speaker, and a chocolate cake with too much rum in it. Everyone left early. They stayed up late — dancing barefoot on the grass, laughing about nothing, wrapped in a warmth that had taken years to learn.
Weeks later, she unpacked the old box of letters.
The first one.
The one from the bookstall.
The ones written across oceans and time zones.
Smudged with weather and waiting.
Paper that had carried them through everything they couldn’t say aloud.
She laid them on the bed like an altar.
Callum stood behind her, arms crossed, watching.
“That’s quite the history,” he said.
She smiled. “It’s our map.”
They spent the evening reading them out loud, one by one. No editing. No shame. Just memory blooming like ink.
Some of the letters were silly. Full of half-thoughts, typos, bad jokes.
Some were sharp — laced with pain and distance, missed calls and words sent too late.
But all of them, every one, led here.
To this room.
To this shared quilt.
To this man reading aloud the sentence she’d once scribbled in doubt:
Love is not thunder. It is the letter that still waits when the storm has passed.
He read that line and kissed her shoulder.
“You’ve always been the better writer,” he said.
“You’ve always been the better reader,” she replied.
They didn’t move back to India.
They didn’t stay in New Zealand forever either.
They moved every few years. Sydney. Edinburgh. Goa for a season. Then a lakeside town in Maine where the library still used card catalogues. They wrote everywhere — postcards, receipts, napkins. Callum published a memoir about oceans and grief. Anaya finished her novel about two people who fall in love through paper.
It became a quiet bestseller.
People wrote to her. Hundreds of strangers. Saying things like Your words found me or I read this with someone I’ve never even met.
She wrote back to as many as she could.
Always signed,
Yours, from somewhere north.
On their fifth anniversary, they returned to the original cottage.
The fig tree had grown. The roof had new moss. The bench where they sat that first winter was still there, only more crooked.
They opened a bottle of wine and sat in silence, just as they had so many times before.
Callum reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a worn envelope.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“One last letter,” he said.
She opened it slowly. The handwriting was still the same — only more certain.
Anaya,
If you’re reading this, we made it.
Through letters. Through airports. Through the noise and the silences. Through versions of ourselves we weren’t sure we could love.
I’ve written you a hundred letters north. And every one brought me home.
Here’s to the ones we’ll never need to send — because now, I get to say it to your face.
I love you.
Always,
C.
She didn’t cry. She just kissed him.
And later that night, under stars that blinked like old secrets, they wrote a new letter together — to someone who hadn’t been born yet.
It began:
Dear future,
We found each other in ink.
And in ink, we leave the light on.
THE END
Thank you for joining A Hundred Letters North
A love story written between silences, across oceans, and always — in ink.
