Shibani Das
One
The announcement crackled overhead like a lazy yawn: “Passengers on Flight TK 1827 to Berlin, please note your flight has been delayed due to weather conditions. Further updates will follow.” Antara Rao barely flinched. Her noise-canceling headphones cushioned her in a half-reality, but she heard enough through the calm of piano jazz to know: she was going nowhere anytime soon. Outside the massive glass panes of Istanbul Airport, snow fell in clumps—thick, lazy tufts swirling like cotton candy being spun by invisible hands. The terminal buzzed with an odd kind of tension: an orchestra of shuffling boots, delayed sighs, and coffee cups clinking against charging stations. Antara sat at Gate B3, legs curled beneath her, a book open on her lap though she hadn’t turned a page in ten minutes. Her carry-on was a mess of tangled chargers, half-written postcards, and a vintage Polaroid camera wrapped in a scarf. She was en route to Berlin for a documentary pitch she’d been obsessing over for weeks, but her mind was elsewhere, trapped in a different kind of delay—one that began with a cryptic WhatsApp message from her estranged father the night before her flight: “If you’re ever in Chennai again, come see the house. Some things are better opened than left behind.” She didn’t reply. She didn’t even know if she wanted to. This layover in Istanbul was supposed to be just a few hours of transit. Instead, it was quickly turning into something more—something undefined, inconvenient, and deeply out of her control.
Across from her, a man was sketching. Not the casual kind of doodling you see in travel journals, but the focused, almost meditative work of someone who lived between lines and shadows. He had sandy hair tucked under a grey beanie, a five o’clock shadow like he’d either forgotten to shave or had chosen not to, and eyes that flicked up occasionally to observe details with quiet precision. He glanced once at Antara—not long enough to be invasive, but enough to register her layered look: navy trench coat, ink-stained fingers, and that unmistakable tiredness of someone who’d been running from something. The coffee in his hand tilted as he looked back down to sketch the feet of a sleeping businessman across the aisle. A few minutes later, a sharp shuffle at the end of the row startled Antara, and she reached out to grab her coffee cup—only to knock it over and send it splashing across the armrest and onto her book. “Oh no—dammit!” she hissed, jumping up. In her scramble to mop it up with tissues, her Polaroid camera tumbled out and nearly hit the floor, but a pair of hands caught it mid-air. “Nice catch,” she murmured. “You’re welcome,” the man said, smiling as he handed it back. “Leica or Polaroid?” “Polaroid. But it’s been with me longer than my last relationship, so… kind of sacred.” He laughed. “Understandable. Sketchbook for me. Much lower maintenance than people.” She allowed herself a small smile. Maybe this delay wasn’t going to be entirely miserable after all.
They didn’t talk again for a while—not until their boarding announcement was delayed again, this time indefinitely. Antara plugged her dying phone into a nearby charging station and saw the same man leaning beside it, flipping through a small leather notebook filled with sketches of everything from airport benches to the awkward hunch of a man sleeping under a flight screen. “Do you always draw strangers?” she asked, half-teasing. He looked up and grinned, a little sheepishly. “Only when they look like they might be dreaming of somewhere else.” “That’s very poetically evasive.” “I’m Elliot,” he said, offering his hand. “Antara.” She shook it. “Nice to meet a fellow layover romantic.” “Romantic is a stretch. I’m just a guy avoiding going back to London.” She nodded. “I’m avoiding Berlin. Or maybe Mumbai. Hard to say.” They spoke more freely after that. Something about the snow softening the urgency of time, the absence of motion making room for presence. They exchanged small confessions like currency: favorite cities, worst flights, best airport meals. Antara told him about her documentary work, and how sometimes she took more Polaroids than she edited footage. Elliot admitted he once drew an entire apartment blueprint for a stranger he met on a train, then never saw her again. The air between them thickened with unspoken stories. As the airport lights dimmed to night mode and the storm outside refused to let go, Antara found herself wondering not about Berlin or her pitch or even the unread message waiting on her phone—but about this stranger who sketched his way through waiting, and what stories they might still discover before the runway cleared.
Two
The second announcement was met not with surprise but with a ripple of resigned groans and shrugs. “Ladies and gentlemen, Flight TK 1827 to Berlin is now further delayed. We apologize for the inconvenience.” Antara didn’t even look up. She had moved to a quieter end of the terminal near a wall of towering glass that overlooked the snow-blanketed tarmac. Her fingers itched for her camera, but she was saving the last few Polaroids for something she couldn’t quite define. Elliot appeared beside her again, this time holding two cups of steaming tea from a small Turkish kiosk, the kind that looked like it hadn’t aged in two decades. “You look like you could use something warm,” he said, offering her one. She took it with a nod of thanks, their fingers brushing briefly in the exchange. “Are you always this nice to strangers?” she asked, sipping carefully. “Only to the ones who spill coffee on themselves and carry sacred Polaroids.” She laughed softly. The snow outside formed ghostly swirls on the windows, and in the warmth of the terminal, their shared silence stretched, not awkwardly but like a breath held just long enough. “Tell me,” he said, “what would you be doing right now if you weren’t stuck in transit?” Antara stared at the snow. “Walking through a museum in Berlin. Alone. Listening to something melancholy. Pretending it’s research when really, it’s just a habit I’ve formed—chasing solitude in beautiful places.” Elliot didn’t say anything for a moment, then answered, “I’d be in a cafe in London, sketching buildings I’ll never design, drinking coffee I pretend to like. Missing someone I thought I was over.” Their truths lay gently between them—too fresh to dissect, too human to ignore.
Time, in the language of airports, was an unreliable narrator. Hours passed, but without agenda, drifting through intermittent gate announcements, overhead lullabies, and the clatter of suitcase wheels. Antara and Elliot wandered the terminal like explorers of an invented city, pointing out odd souvenirs, making up backstories for travelers they passed—“That man’s a retired spy returning home to confess his true identity”; “That couple? On the verge of breaking up but clinging to this vacation like a bandaid.” At a bookstore, Antara disappeared briefly and returned with a worn copy of The Little Prince. “I buy this every time I feel stuck somewhere,” she said. “Leave notes inside and put it back on the shelf.” “What kind of notes?” he asked. She opened the cover and scribbled: ‘To whoever finds this—your layover is someone else’s beginning.’ Then tucked it into the travel section between glossy guides to Greece and Portugal. “Do you do this often?” he asked, watching her with that sketch-artist’s eye. “More than I’d admit to people who think normal is a compliment.” They ended up sprawled across a quiet gate lounge near a Turkish delight stand, the sound of cleaning machines humming in the background. Elliot showed her his sketchbook—dozens of detailed portraits, loose architectural forms, scribbled musings. She ran her finger across a charcoal outline of a cathedral window. “You see details like someone who doesn’t want to forget.” “I’m afraid of forgetting moments that felt like… truth,” he said, his voice low, almost an echo. Antara looked at him, not just his face, but the way he held the pencil like it anchored him, and felt something stir—not the sudden heat of romance, but the quiet realization that she’d met someone who understood the gravity of small things.
By the time the digital clocks announced it was almost midnight, Istanbul Airport had thinned. Only a handful of passengers remained sprawled on chairs, half-asleep, their dreams stitched to delayed flights. Antara and Elliot stood by the giant window overlooking the tarmac where snowplows moved like ghost ships. “Let’s get out,” Elliot said suddenly. She blinked. “Out… as in, out?” “Out of this terminal. Just for an hour. The city’s there, just a tram away. It might be insane. But… maybe the snow won’t wait for us again.” Antara hesitated. The sensible voice in her head screamed caution. But another voice—the one that loved old cities and unscheduled poems—whispered, go. “Okay,” she said finally, breath fogging the glass. “But only if you promise we don’t end up in a Turkish jail.” “Deal,” Elliot grinned. They packed up in near-silence, slipping on coats, scarves, gloves—items bought hurriedly from airport shops hours earlier. As they stepped out into the snow-heavy Istanbul night, the air slapped them awake with cold clarity. The tram was nearly empty, and as they sat side by side, the city began to reveal itself—not as the bustling metropolis of postcards, but a quiet, hidden version of itself, hushed by snow, as if waiting only for them.
Three
The tram doors slid shut with a mechanical hiss as Antara and Elliot stepped aboard, the only passengers apart from an elderly couple huddled beneath layers of wool and a sleepy child wrapped in a bright red jacket. Through the fogged windows, Istanbul glimmered faintly under the snow—mosques crowned in white, storefronts shuttered early, streetlamps throwing soft pools of amber light across sidewalks layered in silence. Antara pulled her scarf tighter around her neck, her breath curling in spirals as she stared out. “This is stupid,” she whispered. “Gloriously,” Elliot replied with a grin, his sketchbook already open on his knee, pencil poised. The tram clattered on, slicing through the frozen city like a secret. Neither of them spoke much. It was that kind of stillness that didn’t demand filling—just the rhythm of motion, the occasional murmur of announcements in Turkish, and the feeling that the world had temporarily forgotten them. Antara’s fingers found her Polaroid camera, and before she could overthink it, she turned to Elliot and clicked. The flash lit up his face in shades of wonder and amusement. “You’re documenting the criminal,” he said, laughing softly. “For evidence.” “For proof,” she corrected. “That this night happened.” As they descended at Sultanahmet, the air struck colder, sharper, but the world more alive. Snow softened the cobblestones, and the grand silhouettes of Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque stood like sleeping giants under a veil of white. There were barely any tourists now—only echoes of stories left behind. They wandered slowly through the slush, their voices hushed, as if afraid to wake history.
They found a small kiosk still open by miracle—an old man selling roasted chestnuts and tea under a canvas awning weighed down by snow. They stood side by side, sipping from steaming paper cups, the warmth like an anchor in their gloved hands. “This city,” Antara said, breaking the silence, “feels like something ancient breathing around us.” Elliot nodded. “Like it remembers you even if you don’t belong to it.” She glanced at him. “Do you believe places hold memories?” “I believe people do. But places give them back to you when you forget.” She thought of the house in Chennai, the message left unread. She thought of her mother’s voice saying, ‘You don’t have to chase your father’s ghosts to know who you are.’ And she thought of now—of snow on eyelashes and this strange, warm conversation between two people who were never supposed to meet. They walked toward the mosque courtyard, where lamplight cast long shadows and the silence was vast enough to hold their thoughts. “You know,” Elliot said, “this reminds me of a night in Florence. I sat on a bridge sketching street musicians until morning. I never told anyone about it.” “Why not?” “It felt like it belonged to someone else until now.” She stared at him, unsure whether it was the cold or the warmth between them that made her heartbeat stutter. “Maybe stories wait for the right ears,” she said. “Or maybe we’re just finally still enough to hear them.” They sat on a stone bench beneath an ancient archway, and for the first time that day, neither felt lost in transit. They felt suspended—like a snowflake mid-fall, like a page mid-turn, not quite past, not quite future.
Elliot reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded scrap from his sketchbook. It was a drawing of her—well, a moment of her—head tilted, camera poised, smile half-born. “I didn’t ask permission,” he said. “But I couldn’t not draw it.” Antara stared at the lines, at how someone could see something in her that she rarely acknowledged herself. “Thank you,” she whispered, unsure what else to offer. They sat in silence as a distant call to prayer unfurled across the city, low and echoing, mixing with the hush of snow. It was, Antara thought, the kind of moment that poetry fails to capture and photography flattens. It wasn’t romantic in the movie sense. It was real in the way that makes you ache. She wanted to say something lasting. Something that would make this night permanent. But instead, she leaned her head on his shoulder, gently, barely touching, and closed her eyes. Elliot didn’t move. The snow kept falling, and the storm didn’t care that time had stopped for them. And perhaps, just for that hour, the world agreed to wait.
Four
The courtyard of Hagia Sophia was a vast, hushed ocean of white. Snow had gathered along the edges of ancient stone walls, clung to the iron railings like silk threads, and dusted the domes in a soft, celestial shimmer. The great structure stood still and majestic, cloaked in time—part mosque, part church, part museum, and now, a silent witness to two strangers trying to make sense of a night that had unfolded without plan or pause. Antara and Elliot moved slowly, boots crunching against the snow, neither speaking for a long stretch, as though anything said aloud might shatter the delicate beauty of this shared silence. They reached the stone bench facing the massive doors, a bench worn smooth by centuries of waiting. Antara sat first, drawing her knees to her chest and hugging them through her coat. Elliot followed suit, dropping into place beside her. The cold pressed against their bodies like memory—sharp, undeniable. “Have you ever felt like you were watching your own life from outside it?” Antara asked suddenly, her voice the barest hush. “Like everything is happening around you, but not to you?” Elliot didn’t answer right away. “Yes,” he said finally, eyes on the archway ahead. “All the time. Especially when I’m doing the things I’m supposed to love. Work, friends, even family dinners. It’s like I’m playing the part of myself without remembering the script.” She let out a soft breath, visible in the cold. “Sometimes I film people for weeks. I hear their voices. Their truths. But when I sit in front of a camera… nothing. I vanish. Like my story isn’t worth telling.” Elliot turned slightly, his shoulder brushing hers. “You’re telling it now.”
Antara blinked away the sting in her eyes, surprised at how easily his words touched that quiet ache she kept hidden—layered beneath professionalism, cleverness, and all the independence she wore like armor. “You know what’s funny?” she said. “I almost canceled this whole trip. My father messaged me the night before I left. We haven’t spoken in… years. He said he wanted me to come see the old house. ‘Some things are better opened than left behind.’ That’s what he wrote.” Elliot looked at her, the weight of her words settling like snowflakes between them. “Did you reply?” She shook her head. “I ran instead. Berlin felt safer. Colder, but safer.” “But now you’re here. With me. Not quite running. Not quite home.” “And you?” she asked. “What are you running from?” He smiled, but it was thin and curved at the corners like something folded too long. “A life I built with someone who no longer exists in it. An engagement ring I kept in a drawer for two years after she left. I was waiting for… I don’t know. A sign? A rewind button? Then one day I sketched the empty space on her side of the bed. That’s when I knew I had to go. Turkey was the first place I picked on a map.” He paused. “And I didn’t expect you.” The snow around them deepened, the air filled with something heavier than silence—something tender, truthful. Antara turned to him, heart thudding against something she didn’t yet have a name for. “Me neither,” she said. “I didn’t expect you.”
For a long moment, neither moved. It wasn’t a movie moment—no swelling music, no dramatic lean-in. Just two people caught in the fragile grace of presence. Antara’s fingers tightened around her camera, but she didn’t lift it. Some memories, she realized, were meant to be kept inside, untouched by film or frame. Elliot glanced at her lips, then looked away. “We should head back,” he said gently, the spell not broken, but paused. She nodded. “Yes. Before they decide we’re missing persons.” But neither stood. Not yet. “Antara,” he said, her name a question and an answer at once. “If this night ends with nothing more than now… will you remember it as something real?” She nodded slowly. “I already do.” And with that, she leaned into him—not for warmth, not for romance, but because something inside her had finally stopped running. He didn’t kiss her. Not yet. But the distance between them was no longer measured in inches. It was measured in heartbeat and breath. The lights of the old city flickered around them. Somewhere, a cat meowed in the shadows. Somewhere, prayers floated across rooftops and disappeared into the sky. And beneath the silent weight of snow and time, Antara Rao and Elliot Hart sat side by side in the hush of history, rewriting the stories they never thought they’d tell—not in words, not in film, not in ink—but in stillness. In waiting. In something as old and quiet and unexpected as love in transit.
Five
The tram back to the airport hummed like a lullaby, slow and almost mournful, its windows fogged by breath and sleep. The snow had softened into a fine mist, like the night itself was gently retreating into morning. Antara sat next to Elliot, their shoulders lightly brushing with every curve of the track, but neither spoke. The silence now held a different weight—not the unfamiliar stillness of strangers, but the dense awareness that time had grown teeth again. She stared at her reflection in the dark window—cheeks flushed, hair curled from snow dampness, and eyes more alive than they’d been in months. She turned to him once, unsure whether to speak. But he was looking at her already, and for a second, the tram vanished and only the space between them existed. “We’ll be back inside that terminal in fifteen minutes,” he said quietly. “Back to flight schedules, boarding zones, and missed calls.” “And real life,” she added, though it didn’t feel like something she wanted to return to just yet. They reached the security entrance, and the spell broke with the gentle ding of sliding doors. The world of fluorescent lights, half-eaten pretzels, and transit announcements returned. As they moved through the quiet shuffle of early passengers, something began to ache—not dramatically, but like the slow press of something slipping out of your hands that you weren’t ready to let go of.
At Gate B3, the departures screen had changed. TK 1827 – Boarding at 06:10. The storm had passed. The world had resumed. Around them, the airport yawned into morning. A janitor wiped melted snow from glass doors. A barista refilled syrups. The magic, it seemed, had an expiration timestamp. Antara and Elliot sat down again in the same seats where they’d first met—just hours ago, though now it felt like an entirely different life. “It’s strange,” Elliot murmured, running his fingers across the edge of his sketchbook, “how you can meet someone for a few hours and feel like they’ve always existed in your timeline.” “Like they slipped between chapters,” Antara added. “Not a main character, not a cameo. Just… a moment that changes the plot.” He looked at her, and there was no playfulness left in his eyes—just sincerity, raw and quiet. “Do we exchange numbers?” he asked. “Do we pretend we’ll call and let it fade, or do we not do anything and leave it perfect?” She considered this, the war inside her between logic and longing louder than anything the PA system could announce. “Let’s not decide right now,” she said, reaching into her bag. She pulled out her Polaroid—the one she’d taken of him the night before, light bursting across his face as he sat in the tram. On the back, she scribbled her name, flight number, and a single line: If this was real for you too, find me in the story we started. Then she tore a page from her notebook and wrapped the photo inside. “What’s that for?” he asked. She smiled. “To leave behind. Somewhere in this terminal. Maybe in a book. Maybe someone else finds it. Maybe you do. That way, if we never meet again, the story still has a reader.”
The final boarding call echoed through the terminal. Passengers shuffled to line up. Time, once frozen, now marched on in practiced cadence. Antara stood, her hand lingering on the back of her seat. Elliot stood too, reluctant in a way that said more than words. “Goodbye,” he said softly. She shook her head. “Not goodbye. Just… until.” “Until when?” “Until something happens. Until one of us finds the next page.” She handed him a wrapped package from the bookstore—The Little Prince—the same copy she’d written in earlier. “Check the note inside,” she whispered. “Not now. Later.” He tucked it into his coat. She didn’t kiss him. Didn’t even touch his face. She simply pressed her fingers lightly against his wrist, as if memorizing his pulse. Then she walked toward the gate, never turning around. But as she stood at the boarding ramp, just before the flight attendant scanned her pass, she looked over her shoulder. Elliot was still standing there, watching. He raised the book slightly. She smiled—small, sure, and sad. And then she boarded the plane, stepping into a cabin of sleepy strangers and fluorescent dreams, leaving behind a snow-covered city, a sleepless night, and a man who made time stand still. The flight took off moments later, slicing through a sky no longer storm-bound. Antara didn’t cry. She simply stared out at the disappearing lights of Istanbul, feeling something strange and beautiful unfold inside her—not loss, not longing, but the birth of a new chapter, unnamed and unfinished.
Six
London was grey when Elliot landed, predictably wet and politely indifferent. The cab ride from Heathrow to his flat in Camden passed in a blur—terraced houses zipped by like cardboard cutouts, rain tracing familiar paths on the windows, his driver humming to a station playing Bowie softly under traffic updates. The city, with all its old brick corners and double-decker distractions, felt just as it had always been. But something inside Elliot had shifted like a panel realigned behind his ribs. He walked into his apartment with the same keys, dropped the same coat on the same hook, but paused when he saw her sketch—Antara’s face, captured on that tram with wonder in her eyes—still resting on the coffee table where he’d placed it the night before his flight to Turkey. He picked it up now like it was a living thing, sat down, and opened the book she had given him: The Little Prince. Inside the cover, above the note she had scribbled for some stranger to find, was a second note—this one meant just for him: If you ever find yourself back in transit and still not sure where you’re going, look for the girl who documents stories and believes in snowstorms. Elliot stared at the words until they blurred, not from tears, but from a feeling too complex to name—gratitude, disbelief, ache, joy. He didn’t text her. Not immediately. Because to name what they had would’ve been to shrink it. What they shared felt better as something that lingered between page margins, between flights, between the yes and no of life.
Meanwhile, in Berlin, Antara unpacked slowly in her rented studio—half gallery, half apartment—near Alexanderplatz. She spread her few belongings across the polished concrete floor like relics of someone else’s life: hard drives, pens, old film rolls, the half-wrapped souvenir box from the Istanbul bookstore that she had nearly forgotten she bought. Her Polaroid camera still smelled faintly of the roasted chestnuts from the previous night, a smell now so anchored in memory she feared losing it to routine. She taped the photo of Elliot—the one with the tram light catching his brow—onto the white wall above her desk. Beneath it, a sticky note in her handwriting: You were here. She sat on her bed, scrolling through messages from her producer, texts from her mother, and the unread message from her father still blinking silently in the archive. For the first time in years, she clicked it open and read it again. This time, she replied: I’ll come in March. I don’t know what I’m ready for, but I’ll come. Then she placed her phone face down, took out her notebook, and began to write—not a script, not an interview list, but a personal essay titled “The Night Between Flights.” She wrote about quiet snow, unsaid things, a stranger who saw her without filters or angles. She wrote it like it mattered, and for the first time, it did. Not because it was publishable. But because it was hers. A story that lived in a moment and now in memory.
Days passed. Then a week. Antara’s Berlin days filled with work, filming street murals, splicing raw footage, eating too many pretzels while skipping lunch. Elliot, back in London, filled pages of his sketchbook with architecture from Istanbul, with snippets of benches and scarves and the curve of a smile he couldn’t unsee. They didn’t speak, not right away. Not because they were afraid, but because something this rare doesn’t ask for maintenance. It waits. And then, one evening—cloudy, ordinary, anonymous—Antara walked into a secondhand bookstore off a street she never meant to explore. She browsed without intent until a familiar spine caught her eye: The Little Prince. She opened it with a half-smile, expecting her note, expecting nothing. Instead, she found a folded piece of paper tucked inside: a sketch of her in the Istanbul snow, laughing, half-blurry as if drawn from memory. Beneath it, in handwriting she already recognized, it said: Let’s get delayed again. Same place, same time? Until then—E. She stood still for a long time in the middle of the quiet shop, breathing in that impossible feeling when fiction spills into life. And in that instant, the story didn’t feel over. It felt like it had just begun.
Seven
Berlin did what Berlin does best—it moved forward. Days broke with tram horns and grey skies, neon signs flickered back to life at dusk, and Antara Rao found herself melting back into her familiar rhythms. But something had changed. Work still demanded her attention, her edits were still behind schedule, and her producer still spoke in coffee-fueled bullet points. Yet, in quiet hours—during tram rides between shoots, while waiting in line at the Turkish kebab shop near Rosenthaler Platz, or as snow melted from her window ledge—Antara would drift back into that layover night. It was like a perfume left behind on a scarf, faint but persistent. She found herself pulling out her Polaroid camera more often, snapping strangers at traffic lights, scribbling thoughts in the margins of menus, listening to strangers more deeply. Even her footage shifted—a little slower, a little more open to serendipity. One afternoon, while editing a montage of elderly musicians from Kreuzberg, she caught herself tracing Elliot’s face in her memory—the way his eyes crinkled at the edges, the subtle concentration when he sketched, the warmth of his silence. She hadn’t texted him, not yet. She wasn’t ready to break whatever spell they were under. This wasn’t about filling the space with messages or updates. It was about letting the story breathe. But every day, the photo of him on her wall whispered: He’s real. You didn’t imagine him.
In London, Elliot’s flat felt both familiar and foreign, like trying on a suit tailored to someone you no longer were. The walls still bore his sketches, but now Istanbul had crept into the corners—minarets, street lamps, and snow-washed plazas filled his pages. He started waking up earlier, wandering the local market just to sketch old people buying bread or children chasing pigeons. He began to draw her from memory—Antara, in scarf and boots, laughing as she sipped sahlep, her eyes closed beneath falling snow. Sometimes, he wondered what he would say if he saw her again. Would you still lean your head on my shoulder without asking? Would we still speak like we were finishing an unfinished sentence? He didn’t want to call her. Not yet. But he did something else—he sketched a small series titled Transit Love Stories and anonymously submitted them to an indie magazine. They were accepted. The editor called them “honest, aching, and filled with a hope that refuses to be dramatic.” Elliot smiled when he read the review. They had no idea they weren’t fiction. Sometimes he’d walk into bookstores and slip messages into books: Snow happens. So does magic. or This seat is still warm from where she sat. It was foolish, he knew. But it made him feel connected to her, like she might one day stumble into one and understand that these were breadcrumbs, not goodbyes.
Then came the postcard. Postmarked from Berlin. A simple black-and-white photograph of a snow-covered tram, with handwriting he knew instantly: I saw someone who looked like you today. But it wasn’t you. I took the long route home anyway. —A. He read it four times before setting it against his lamp. And finally, he allowed himself to write back. He didn’t email. He sent a sketch: the bench outside Hagia Sophia, empty, waiting, with a single scarf draped across it. On the back he wrote: We wrote a story that didn’t end. Maybe it doesn’t have to. Weeks passed. The world kept turning, but Elliot and Antara moved through it like people who had been reminded of something rare—who knew that some stories only begin when you’re not trying to start them. They didn’t rush. They didn’t force the next chapter. But they felt it growing quietly in the background. In the songs they heard on the radio. In the books they lingered over. In the streets they walked hoping for something that looked like destiny. They were no longer just people who met during a snowstorm at an airport. They were, unknowingly, already writing the next part—between trams and teacups, between missed calls and second glances. Real life had returned. But the magic hadn’t really left.
Eight
It was raining in Berlin the day Antara walked into the little English-language bookstore tucked behind a coffee shop near Hackescher Markt—one of those blink-and-you-miss-it places where the floor creaked like an old memory and the books leaned into each other like sleepy friends. She hadn’t planned to be there. Her meeting had been canceled. The tram was delayed. She needed to be somewhere that wasn’t just another café with noisy freelancers and flat whites. She wiped her boots on the mat, shook the rain off her scarf, and wandered through the shelves. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular—maybe something old, maybe something she hadn’t read since she was seventeen. The familiar blue spine of The Little Prince called to her again. Smiling, she reached for it—not out of nostalgia, but instinct. And when she opened it, her breath caught in her throat. Tucked inside the cover was a folded piece of paper. A sketch. Her. On that stone bench outside Hagia Sophia. Eyes closed, head tilted up to catch snow. She looked peaceful, untouched. On the back, Elliot’s handwriting: You said some stories should be left behind. I disagreed. Below that, a line in pencil—half a challenge, half a prayer: I’m here. If you still believe in layovers. Antara blinked. The rain outside blurred the windows. The world around her dissolved into a hush. She held the paper to her chest for a second. Then she turned to the store clerk and asked if they had a pen.
Somewhere in London, Elliot stood beneath the awning of his favorite riverside café, sipping coffee far too strong, sketchbook tucked under his arm. He wasn’t waiting—at least not in the way that made your chest ache. He was simply… hoping. He did this on days when the city felt like it might tilt slightly in his favor. Days that smelled like wet brick and roasted chestnuts. Days that reminded him of Istanbul. As he walked past a nearby bookstore—a chain, nothing quaint—his phone buzzed. Unknown number. A message. One image: a Polaroid of a note taped inside The Little Prince. Her handwriting. Let’s get delayed again. Your move. His heart thudded—not dramatically, not cinematically, but as if the world had gently nudged him toward something it had been holding onto all along. He looked around—at the café window, at the street, at his reflection in the glass—and smiled. That rare, stunned kind of smile that you don’t try to hide. The kind that says: Maybe I was never lost. Then he turned, stepped inside the bookshop, and went straight to the travel section. The next hour passed in slow, delicious slowness—like waiting for a film to begin. He didn’t text her back. Not yet. He simply wrote a new note, tucked it into the pages of A Moveable Feast, and left it with the bookstore clerk. Then he stepped out into the rain, not knowing if she’d find it, but certain she was looking.
One week later, in a tiny Berlin café with mismatched mugs and jazz on loop, Antara opened a package wrapped in brown paper and string. Inside was a secondhand copy of A Moveable Feast. On the inside flap, a sketch: Istanbul airport’s Gate B3. Empty chairs. Two suitcases. A paper cup balanced on the armrest. Beneath it, in handwriting she now knew by heart: Boarding Now. Same gate. Different flight. Her hands shook. Not from fear. But from the steady realization that life—when allowed to breathe—returns what matters. She packed lightly. One coat. One camera. One notebook. And the Polaroid of Elliot. She flew out two days later, no return ticket. In the arrivals lounge of Istanbul Airport, snow was just beginning to fall again. Not heavy. Just enough to soften edges. Enough to say: Some things come back when they’re meant to. And there he was. Elliot Hart. Standing by Gate B3, sketchbook in hand, looking up just as she stepped into view. No speeches. No declarations. Just two people who believed that magic could repeat itself—if you gave it the chance to. As they smiled, walked toward each other, and the screen above flickered to another delay, neither of them minded. Some flights are worth missing. Some stories are worth circling back to. And some loves are born not in the beginning, but in transit.
-End-
