Elina Thomas
Part 1: Spring Will Not Ask Your Name
The bus wound up the narrow road, wheels kissing the edge of the mountain like a daredevil child. Aanya sat by the window, her duffel bag pressed to her side like a comfort blanket. The sky outside was an impatient shade of blue, and the hills wore a fresh green robe, tender leaves swaying in spring wind. She hadn’t spoken a word in the six-hour journey from Chandigarh to Chail. Not to the conductor. Not to the woman beside her who smelled of boiled peanuts and turmeric. Words felt like stones in her throat—heavy, lodged, and useless.
It had been six months since Aryan died. Six months since the call came while she was covering a farmers’ protest in Madhya Pradesh. Six months since she buried her brother—his skateboard beside him, his hoodie zipped up, as if he were still mid-laugh. People said healing comes in stages. Anger. Denial. Acceptance. But Aanya felt none of those in clean succession. Only numbness and noise. And now, here she was, stepping off a rickety bus onto dusty gravel, in a town with barely a signal and no one who knew her name.
The homestay was an old colonial cottage perched on a ridge. “Woodsmoke & Whispers,” it was called. Run by a retired schoolteacher and his wife, the place had lace curtains, firewood smell, and lemon trees dotting the garden. Aanya didn’t ask questions or make conversation when Mrs. Sharma served her ginger tea in delicate china. She simply nodded and sat on the porch, eyes resting on the pines.
That’s where Rohan first saw her.
He was walking his dog, a white indie named Mowgli, who barked once at the porch and then wagged his tail like he’d seen an old friend. Aanya looked down at the dog, patted his head silently, and then resumed staring at the horizon. Rohan, slightly awkward, gave her a half-smile. She didn’t return it.
The next morning, they crossed paths again—at the Saturday market. She was picking out guavas with a surgical seriousness, frowning at ripeness like it betrayed her. Rohan stood a few feet away, buying turmeric root from the same vendor. “The soft ones are sweeter,” he said casually. “They look overripe, but they’re perfect.”
She looked up. “I know,” she replied, then dropped the guava back.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
Over the next few weeks, their orbits began to brush. At the tea stall near the ridge, they both showed up on Wednesdays. At the library with the green shutters, he’d be returning books on ecology, and she’d be flipping through old travelogues, her fingers grazing yellowed pages. It was never intentional. Just the rhythm of a small town. But slowly, like snow melting in a forgotten corner, something shifted.
He found out her name from Mrs. Sharma. She learned he was a forest officer from the nameplate on his door near the woods. He had been in Chail for three years. Before that—Delhi. Before that—married. She didn’t ask questions. Neither did he.
One afternoon, when the wind smelled of lavender and damp soil, he found her sketching the valley. It was unexpected. Her fingers held a charcoal pencil, not a camera. “You’re an artist?” he asked, surprised.
“Not really. Just… trying to remember how to feel something.”
He didn’t know how to reply to that. So he sat beside her quietly. Mowgli lay at their feet, ears twitching in sleep. In front of them, the valley spread like a secret. The hills were not loud here. They breathed, slowly, like old monks in meditation.
“Do you miss him?” he asked after a long silence.
She didn’t flinch. “Every second. Even now.”
Rohan nodded. “I miss her too.”
And that was all they said about grief for many weeks.
Instead, they shared other things—small things. He brought her fresh rhododendron flowers to press between pages. She left lemons on his doorstep, with notes scribbled on paper napkins. They hiked once, without speaking, and sat on a rock as sunlight spilled between the deodars. The town accepted them as a quiet pair—never touchy, never loud, but always seen together.
One night, a local fair lit up the hills. Paper lanterns floated into the sky like fireflies with purpose. Children ran around with candy sticks, and a woman sang Himachali folk under a string of fairy lights. Aanya stood by the lake, watching the reflection of lanterns shiver on water. Rohan stood beside her.
“Do you believe in signs?” she asked suddenly.
“Only in forests,” he said. “Nature doesn’t lie.”
She smiled. It was small, but it reached her eyes.
He looked at her face, soft under the gold glow of a hundred lanterns. “You’re not running away anymore, are you?”
She turned to him. “No. Just… learning how to stay still.”
Spring in the hills didn’t shout. It whispered. In blooming plums. In moss on stone walls. In the rustle of bamboo. And perhaps, in two broken people learning how to be whole without rushing it.
That night, Aanya dreamt of Aryan for the first time in weeks. He wasn’t falling this time. He was skateboarding through pines, laughing, and pointing at something behind her. When she turned, she saw Rohan—older, patient, standing still with a firefly cupped in his hand.
She woke with a tear drying on her cheek and a strange calm in her chest.
Outside, the valley yawned into morning.
Spring, it seemed, had finally arrived.
Part 2: The Summer of Learning to Laugh
The first true day of summer arrived without notice. The hillsides had shed their dew-coated mornings and wore the scent of ripe apricots and sun-drenched pine bark. The air turned softer, and the shadows shrunk. Everything seemed to glow a little too long into the evening, as if the sun was reluctant to leave the party.
Aanya found herself waking earlier than usual, without the usual heaviness dragging at her ribs. She still took her tea without sugar. Still walked the ridge road with a charcoal pencil tucked behind her ear. But now, sometimes, she hummed—soft, aimless melodies that didn’t belong to any song.
Rohan began stopping by with excuses.
“Thought you might want to try these mulberries. Just picked them near the southern bend,” he’d say, holding out a palmful wrapped in a leaf.
Or, “The lake’s got dragonflies today. Whole swarms. Might be a good day for photos.”
Sometimes he’d bring Mowgli. Sometimes just himself, carrying a thermos of cooled tea flavored with lemongrass. Aanya didn’t ask him to sit, but she’d make space on the porch. And he always brought something that didn’t need explaining—silence, mostly, and the quiet hum of companionship.
One day, Mrs. Sharma invited her to help make plum jam. “Summer fruits won’t wait,” she warned, handing her an apron.
It was Rohan who showed up an hour later with more fruit than they could possibly need.
“You have a jam crisis?” he joked, walking into the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, a mischievous glint in his usually solemn eyes.
They made five jars. Then seven. Then two more just because Aanya had never quite mastered the perfect swirl on top.
Rohan stole one for himself, and when Mrs. Sharma caught him, he simply bowed theatrically. “For official forest preservation purposes,” he declared. “Jam diplomacy.”
That evening, they sat on a low wall near the temple, their fingers sticky from shared toast. Aanya licked a bit of jam from her wrist, laughing as Rohan accidentally smeared some on his shirt.
“You’re hopeless,” she chuckled.
“You smiled again,” he said, not mocking, not smug—just noticing.
It hit her then—how rare it had become, the sound of her laughter. Not the polite kind. The real one. The kind her brother used to call “the thunderclap.” The kind she buried with him.
“I don’t feel guilty,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
“Why should you?” he asked gently.
“I thought… if I ever felt joy again, it would mean forgetting him.”
Rohan shook his head. “It means remembering him differently. Without drowning.”
They sat until the fireflies came. And in that golden hush of dusk, their hands brushed—not held, not gripped—just touched, and remained there.
That weekend, the forest trail reopened after its annual clearing. Rohan asked if she’d like to come along while he marked the new saplings. She said yes without hesitation.
They walked for hours through oak groves and cedar belts, their footsteps muffled by soft soil and leaf beds. He explained things in simple words—how to spot a hornbill’s nest, how to smell rain before it arrived, how to read the bark for age. Aanya listened with a curiosity she hadn’t felt in months. Nature, it seemed, had its own language, and Rohan had long since learned how to translate.
At a clearing, they stopped for water. A troop of langurs watched them lazily from a branch.
“You don’t get lonely?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Sometimes. But it’s quieter here. Grief echoes less in wide spaces.”
She looked up at the canopy. “Maybe that’s why I came.”
He studied her then—not as a stranger, not even as a friend, but as someone beginning to matter. There was a softness in his eyes that made her look away first.
They began cooking dinners together. Nothing dramatic—dal, rice, a salad with too many chilies. But the rhythm was comforting. Rohan would chop, Aanya would stir, and Mowgli would circle like an unpaid supervisor.
“You burn garlic like it insulted your family,” she teased once.
He feigned offense. “I’m a forest man, not a Michelin chef.”
They laughed again. So often, so freely, that Mrs. Sharma began humming wedding songs just loud enough to be heard through the window.
The townsfolk began whispering, as small towns do. The widow and the visitor. The silent man and the girl who came to forget. But neither of them paid it much attention. They weren’t lovers—not yet. But something more fragile. A beginning, maybe. A blueprint for healing.
Then came the incident.
One Tuesday evening, a storm rolled in fast. Aanya, out sketching near the gorge, hadn’t noticed the sky darkening. By the time she began heading back, the downpour had begun. Cold, slicing rain soaked through her clothes. The narrow trail turned slick. She slipped, not badly, but enough to tear her palm on a sharp rock.
She reached the cottage, shivering, drenched, bloodied.
Rohan was there before she knocked. He opened the door, eyes widening.
“Jesus, Aanya—”
“I’m fine,” she managed, teeth chattering. “Just wet and stupid.”
He didn’t argue. Just pulled her inside, peeled off her shawl, wrapped her in a thick towel, and knelt to look at her hand.
The wound was shallow, but he cleaned it like a ritual. No jokes. No bravado. Just the quiet, firm care of someone who knew what pain looked like. When she winced, he looked up, his face inches from hers.
“You’re not made of glass,” he said.
“I feel like it sometimes.”
“Then let me be careful with you.”
Something changed in her then. Something cracked open. She leaned forward, rested her head on his shoulder. For the first time, her body let itself lean on someone without flinching.
They didn’t kiss. They didn’t need to.
That night, as the storm howled outside, Aanya lay awake in her bed, listening to the thunder, thinking of how safe she’d felt just hours ago in a stranger’s arms.
Except he wasn’t a stranger anymore.
Summer, it seemed, was not just for ripening fruit. It was for softening people too.
Part 3: Monsoon Names Everything
The first monsoon rain arrived like a held breath finally exhaled. It didn’t tap gently on the rooftops—it came in sheets, loud and unapologetic, swallowing the hills in silver veils. By morning, the valley was a different world. The dusty trails had turned to streams, the pines shimmered as though freshly painted, and the scent of soaked earth clung to everything like a love letter left in the rain.
Aanya stood on the porch of Woodsmoke & Whispers, barefoot, watching the world blur into softness. The hem of her linen kurta darkened slowly, but she didn’t step back. Rain used to remind her of Aryan—of skateboarding through puddles, his laughter bouncing off wet roads. But now, in this new life she hadn’t asked for, the rain felt like language. Something wordless, but not empty.
Rohan appeared like he always did—quietly, as if materializing from the trees. He held two paper-wrapped samosas and a flask of chai in a worn jute bag. Mowgli was nowhere to be seen—hiding, likely, under the forest office bench he hated leaving during storms.
“Breakfast delivery,” he said, shaking off droplets from his hair.
Aanya grinned. “Braving the flood for fried potatoes?”
“For you? Yes. For potatoes? Always.”
They ate on the porch, legs swinging off the edge, feet muddy. The chai was strong and slightly sweet—he remembered she liked it bitter, but not cruel. As the rain softened into drizzle, they sat shoulder to shoulder, warm and wordless.
“Did you always live like this?” she asked suddenly.
“Like what?”
“In rhythm with clouds.”
Rohan chuckled. “I guess I stopped fighting the seasons. They’re more predictable than people.”
She nodded. “I used to think cities made me real. That the rush kept me breathing. But maybe… I was just drowning.”
He looked at her then, serious. “You were surviving. That’s different.”
Silence hung between them, thick but not uncomfortable. A frog croaked somewhere. Water dripped from the tin awning like a ticking clock.
“I wrote something,” she said finally.
He raised an eyebrow. “You write?”
“I used to. Before photos. Before… everything.”
She reached into her pocket and handed him a folded, damp notebook page. He read it slowly. It wasn’t poetry. It wasn’t a story. It was a memory—of a boy jumping into puddles and calling them moon mirrors. Of his sister laughing, camera in hand. Of grief that never asked for permission. It was raw, unfiltered, and achingly beautiful.
“You should keep writing,” he said, handing it back.
She looked down. “Maybe I just needed someone to read it.”
And with that, something clicked into place. Not a confession. Not a romance novel kiss. But an unspoken agreement: we see each other now.
In the days that followed, the monsoon became their third companion. It dictated their walks, postponed their errands, and framed their stories. When the electricity failed, they lit candles and played antakshari like bored children. When the roads flooded, they built paper boats and raced them downhill. Once, Rohan slipped and fell flat on his back in the slush, and Aanya laughed so hard she cried.
“You’re mean,” he groaned, wet and dramatic.
“You’re clumsy,” she shot back, helping him up with zero sympathy.
They were slowly becoming something unnamed. Not lovers, not friends, not yet. But threads were weaving. Between jam jars and bruised palms. Between folded notes and rainy-day songs.
One night, thunder cracked open the sky like a warning. Aanya couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking of the city—of how lonely her flat had felt, even with company. How the lights never went out there. How grief had no place to hide.
She stepped outside with a shawl and found Rohan already there, under the porch light, fixing an old bamboo wind chime that had come loose.
“You heard it too?” she asked.
“The wind?” he said.
“No. The loneliness.”
He gave her a look she couldn’t quite name. Then he motioned her over, and together, in the flickering light, they re-tied the string, knotting it against the wind’s tantrum.
“You think this place changed you?” she asked, leaning against the post.
“It didn’t change me. It reminded me I’m allowed to feel.”
She looked down at her bare feet. “Sometimes I think the rain is trying to tell me something.”
Rohan stepped closer. “Then maybe you should listen.”
He reached out and tucked a wet curl behind her ear. His fingers lingered just a moment too long. Her heart caught in her throat—not because it was dramatic, but because it was real.
They didn’t kiss. Not that night. But something had shifted. The storm wasn’t outside anymore. It was inside now—warm, careful, electric.
The next morning, the rain stopped.
They walked to the market—together this time—and the townsfolk noticed. Not just their closeness, but how they moved in step. Like music. Like verses of the same poem.
At the grocer’s, an old woman offered them both marigold garlands.
“For luck,” she said, winking.
Aanya blushed. Rohan took them with a laugh. They hung them on the handlebars of his scooter, like some joke they were both in on.
Later that day, Mrs. Sharma pulled Aanya aside.
“Beta,” she said, “I see the way he looks at you.”
Aanya smiled softly. “I’m not sure I’m ready.”
Mrs. Sharma squeezed her hand. “Love doesn’t knock twice. But it does wait. If it’s true.”
That evening, Aanya wrote again.
She wrote about monsoon frogs and slippery moss. About laughter that sounded like healing. About the boy who brought her samosas in the rain and looked at her like she wasn’t broken.
She left the note under Rohan’s window.
No signature. No date. Just a line:
You make the rain feel like music again.
And for once, she didn’t wait to be read.
Part 4: The Winter We Didn’t Expect
The first frost came early that year. Not with pomp, not with the grandeur of snowfall, but with a stillness so sharp that even the birds paused mid-flight. The valley turned pale, breath visible on morning walks, leaves crunching underfoot like soft warnings. The scent of woodsmoke filled the air again, and the sky pulled closer, bruised with greys and quiet purples.
Rohan found the note Aanya had left him two mornings after she slipped it under his window. He didn’t ask why. He didn’t knock on her door with a reply. But when they walked to the lake that afternoon, he packed two cups instead of one and poured her ginger-laced coffee in the steel tumbler she always liked best. It wasn’t a declaration. It was acknowledgment. And she understood.
But winter, like all things real, doesn’t only bring warmth. It strips trees bare. It sharpens memory. It demands endurance.
And it had demands for them too.
One evening, just as the chill began to bite, Aanya received a call from Delhi. Her editor. A new assignment—an NGO in Spiti Valley needed a visual storyteller to document the post-flood rehabilitation efforts. Remote, challenging, time-bound. One month. Maybe two.
She said yes.
The words left her lips before she realized she hadn’t told Rohan anything.
That night, she paced her room, unsure why her heart was racing more from this than it had when she’d covered civil unrest and cyclone zones. It wasn’t the altitude. It wasn’t the cold.
It was the idea of leaving someone she wasn’t ready to name.
She told him two days later, over their shared walk through the cedar belt, Mowgli running ahead like he always did.
“I said yes to something,” she said, trying not to sound like she was hiding anything.
He didn’t stop walking, but his stride slowed.
“For how long?”
“Maybe six weeks. Maybe less. They want photos. And a story.”
“And you want to go?”
“I think… I need to. To remember who I was. To see if she’s still there.”
Rohan nodded. “I get that.”
She looked at him. “You do?”
He stopped then, turned to face her fully. “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t scare me. But I’d never ask you to stay when something is calling you. I’ve been the person who stayed too long once. It breaks you in quiet ways.”
She took his hand—his fingers were cold, calloused, steady.
“I’ll come back.”
“Then go,” he said gently. “Just don’t forget where the trail home begins.”
Her train left from Kalka three days later. Mrs. Sharma packed her aloo parathas wrapped in butter paper. Mowgli whimpered at her feet as she zipped up her camera bag. Rohan drove her to the station. They didn’t say much. But just as the train whistle blew, he handed her something—a small carved wooden box.
She opened it hours later, somewhere between the hills and the dry plains. Inside were pressed rhododendron petals, a piece of plum jam-stained napkin, and the charcoal sketch she had left behind weeks ago. Folded neatly beneath it all was another note.
Come back not when the work is done, but when your heart says it’s time. I’ll be listening.
Spiti was a world of its own. Stark. White. Beautiful in ways that didn’t beg for attention. The people were kind, weathered, purposeful. Aanya rose with the sun and slept with the stars, her fingers frozen but her eyes awake. She photographed stories of survival, of women rebuilding homes, of children chasing sheep across snowy plains. She began writing again—short letters to Aryan in her journal, as if catching him up on everything he’d missed. As if he were the lens now through which she saw the world.
And every now and then, she’d find herself looking at pine trees or plum orchards and smile without reason.
Rohan called just once. The connection was terrible. Most of their conversation was static and half-laughs. But near the end, just before the call dropped, he said three words she’d been afraid to name.
“I miss you.”
And then it was gone.
But that was enough.
Winter in Spiti was brutal. She returned early. Two weeks ahead of schedule. Her editor was surprised. She simply said, “The story is finished. The rest belongs to them.”
When she stepped off the bus at Chail, the town hadn’t changed. But she had.
Rohan was waiting by the old tea stall. Not in uniform. Not holding flowers. Just standing there with his sleeves rolled and two cups of chai.
He didn’t run. She didn’t cry.
They just stood there, letting the moment settle into their bones.
“I thought you said six weeks,” he said softly.
“I listened to my heart,” she replied.
He handed her the tea. “Did it say come home?”
She looked up at him, eyes bright. “Louder than thunder.”
He laughed—fully, deeply, the kind of laugh she’d never heard from him before. She stepped into it, into him, and for the first time since they met, they embraced. Not like a scene from a film. No spinning. No grand music. Just arms around one another, warmth on a cold day, and breath shared between familiar bodies.
Later, as they walked back to the cottage, snow began to fall.
Aanya reached out and caught a flake on her palm.
“You know,” she said, “I used to think grief would be the last season I’d ever live in.”
“And now?”
“Now I know—love has seasons too.”
He looked at her then, not as the woman who once stared at hills from a porch, but as the one who had returned from them, still whole, still choosing.
“Then let’s see what spring brings next.”
Part 5: When the Past Comes Knocking
Spring returned like a memory repeating itself—but softer, kinder, familiar. The trees bloomed again with reckless pinks and shy whites. Bees returned to the apricot blossoms, and the sun lingered longer on the hills as if afraid to miss anything. The valley held its breath in quiet anticipation, as though waiting for something—or someone—to arrive.
Aanya and Rohan had found a rhythm. Not the kind poets romanticize. Not cinematic. But real. Mornings of shared silence over coffee. Afternoons of scattered laughter while grocery shopping. Evenings of reading side by side, legs touching, hearts not needing to prove anything.
She hadn’t said “I love you.” He hadn’t either.
But in the way she rested her head on his shoulder when the wind picked up…
In the way he covered her sketchbook with a shawl when she fell asleep under the plum tree…
In the way their hands reached for the same orange at the fruit stall and didn’t let go…
Love had already been spoken. Without syllables.
And then one morning, a knock came that didn’t belong to spring.
Aanya was helping Mrs. Sharma pick coriander from the garden when the sound broke the moment. Firm. Rhythmic. Impatient.
She wiped her hands and opened the gate.
The man who stood there was city-polished. Jeans too clean for the hills. Sunglasses that reflected everything except emotion. His voice sliced the quiet.
“Aanya.”
She blinked.
“Ravi?”
He smiled, tight-lipped. “Took me three trains and a jeep to get here.”
Mrs. Sharma excused herself discreetly. Aanya stepped back, her spine suddenly aware of itself.
“I thought you were in London.”
“I was. Got back two weeks ago.”
She nodded, unsure what to say. The last time she saw Ravi, he had kissed her forehead and said, “We deserve different futures.” That was two years and an engagement ring ago. An engagement that never became a wedding.
“Can we talk?” he asked, eyes scanning the garden like it held secrets.
She hesitated. “Okay.”
They sat on the stone bench under the lemon tree. He didn’t touch her. Just looked at her like one examines a book left out in the rain.
“You look different.”
“You don’t.”
A pause.
“I saw your Spiti photos. They’re everywhere.”
She didn’t smile. “Why are you here, Ravi?”
He sighed. “I thought I made a mistake. Walking away. I kept thinking… maybe we left too much unsaid.”
“There was nothing left to say.”
“There’s always something left,” he said, softer now. “You’re still wearing the bracelet I gave you.”
She looked down at her wrist, surprised. It had become a part of her—threaded and faded. Memory disguised as habit.
“I’m not the same person you left.”
“Neither am I. That’s why I’m here.”
The moment stretched thin, like the fragile ice on early spring mornings.
Before she could reply, Rohan’s voice cut gently through the quiet.
“Hey.”
He stood near the gate, hands in his pockets, reading the scene like a page turned too fast.
Aanya stood up. “Rohan, this is Ravi. We… used to be—”
“I figured,” Rohan said, offering a courteous nod. “I was bringing you some apricots. They just started turning gold.”
He handed her the basket. She didn’t meet his eyes.
Ravi stood too, extending a hand. “Rohan, is it?”
“Yes.”
“You live here?”
“I do.”
“For long?”
“Long enough,” Rohan said. His voice wasn’t cold. But it had steel.
Ravi smirked slightly. “Small world.”
Aanya could feel the weight of two pasts colliding in a single breath.
“I think I should go,” Ravi said, glancing at her. “I just wanted to see you. Say it in person.”
“You did.”
He nodded and turned to leave.
But then paused. “You seem… better.”
“I am.”
Rohan waited until the sound of Ravi’s footsteps faded into the pines.
Aanya exhaled slowly. “I didn’t know he’d come.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t ask him to.”
“I know that too.”
They sat on the stone bench, the apricot basket between them.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked gently.
She shook her head. “Not today.”
“Okay.”
She touched the bracelet on her wrist. Then slowly, without drama, slipped it off.
And placed it on the bench.
Rohan didn’t smile. But he reached for her hand, and she let him.
That evening, the wind changed.
Aanya sat at her desk, watching dusk fall over the hills. She opened her notebook and began writing:
Sometimes, the past doesn’t knock to come back in. Sometimes it just wants to see if the door still opens. I closed it today. Not with bitterness. But with peace.
Outside, Rohan fed Mowgli leftover rice, humming a tune she didn’t know but wanted to learn. She watched him, this man who never rushed her healing, who offered space instead of promises.
That night, as they sat by the fire, he looked at her long and said, “You don’t have to say anything, Aanya. But I need you to know—whatever this is, I’m not walking away.”
She looked at him, eyes calm, voice clear.
“I don’t want you to. Not now. Not ever.”
He smiled then, and this time, it reached his eyes.
Spring had come again. But this time, it was new—not repeating, not echoing, but blooming differently.
With deeper roots.
Part 6: The Quiet Between Two Storms
The days that followed Ravi’s departure were strangely quiet—not in sound, but in sensation. Like the hush that settles just before a storm, when the air is too still, and the birds forget how to sing. Aanya felt it in her body: a subtle tremble beneath calm skin, a stillness that didn’t belong to peace but to waiting.
She didn’t speak of Ravi again, and Rohan didn’t bring it up. They carried on with their days—tea at sunrise, evening walks, charcoal sketches, his dog bounding through wild mustard fields. But something lingered in the margins. Not distrust. Not doubt. Just the quiet kind of tension that happens when people care too much and are terrified of breaking what they’ve begun to build.
One evening, as April threatened to become May, the sky turned wild.
It wasn’t unexpected—summer storms often came unannounced in the hills—but this one had a fury that shook the forest. Trees bent like old men praying. Electricity flickered and died. The valley disappeared in a sweep of white and grey.
Aanya was alone at the cottage. Rohan had gone to Shimla for a forestry meeting. His return was delayed. The wind banged at the shutters, and the fire wouldn’t catch. She lit candles, curled under a shawl, and tried to read. But the story dissolved. Her eyes kept wandering to the window.
The knock came at 9:47 p.m.
Not a gentle tap.
A hard, deliberate knock.
She froze.
A second knock. Faster.
She opened the door without asking who it was.
There stood a girl, no older than twenty. Soaked. Barefoot. Her kurta clung to her body, and her lips trembled, not from the cold but from something deeper—fear.
“Please,” the girl said. “Can I come in?”
Aanya stepped back immediately. “Of course.”
The girl collapsed into the chair near the hearth, hands shaking.
“What happened?” Aanya asked, crouching in front of her, reaching for a dry towel.
“I… I was walking. A man—he followed me from the bus stand. I ran. I didn’t know where else to go.”
Aanya’s stomach tightened.
“What’s your name?”
“Simi,” the girl whispered.
Aanya brought warm water, a blanket, and dry clothes from her own suitcase. Simi changed silently in the bathroom, then returned, sitting cross-legged on the rug, hugging the mug of chai like it could hold her together.
The storm outside screamed louder. A branch snapped somewhere close.
Simi stared at the flames, her eyes glassy.
“You’re safe now,” Aanya said softly.
“You live here alone?”
“No. Not always. My… someone lives nearby.”
Simi looked at her then. “You’re lucky. To have someone.”
Aanya offered a weak smile. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s terrifying.”
“Because it can be taken away?”
“Because it makes you vulnerable. And alive.”
At 11:13 p.m., Rohan called. The signal broke twice. She told him briefly about Simi. He promised to come at dawn.
The three of them sat together the next morning, under a clearing sky. Rohan arrived with fresh parathas and a calm voice. He listened to Simi’s story—simple, terrifying, and all too common. A man on a bus. A wrong look. A wrong step. A night she’ll never forget.
Rohan offered to escort her to the local women’s hostel and file a report at the forest office. Simi agreed. She looked at Aanya as she left.
“Thank you. Not just for the blanket. For believing me.”
Aanya nodded. “Always.”
When the door closed behind them, she sat in the silence they left behind and cried—not for herself. Not even for Simi. But for how often women had to fear being alive.
That night, Rohan returned with two hot water bags and tired eyes. They sat on the porch with soup and shared quiet.
“She reminded me of someone,” Aanya said.
“Who?”
“Myself. Before I forgot how to ask for help.”
Rohan placed his hand on hers.
“You never needed to ask.”
They watched the stars come out, shy and scattered. The storm had passed. But something in the air had changed again.
Later, as they stood washing dishes in the tiny kitchen, Rohan looked at her.
“Can I ask you something?” he said, rinsing the last plate.
“Of course.”
“If I asked you to stay—not here in this cottage, not in Chail—but in this life we’re building—would you?”
She turned, heart suddenly loud in her chest.
“I don’t want to be someone you shelter from storms,” she said. “I want to be someone who walks through them beside you.”
He nodded. “That’s all I ever hoped for.”
She reached out, touched his face. “Then yes.”
They kissed—slowly, like reading a poem aloud for the first time. Nothing urgent. Nothing claimed. Just two people who had learned how to lose and now dared to want.
That night, they didn’t sleep in separate beds.
They didn’t undress in frenzy or fear.
They lay together, her head on his chest, his thumb tracing the curve of her wrist where the old bracelet used to be.
“You make me want to stay,” she whispered.
“You make me believe staying is enough,” he replied.
Outside, the valley slept. The storm was memory now. But inside, a promise took root.
A quiet one.
The kind that didn’t need lightning to be real.
Part 7: The Things We Name as Home
The rains had washed the world clean, and by mid-May, the valley glowed in green like it was dressing up for a secret celebration. Birds returned with songs stitched from distance, and tiny wildflowers pressed their faces against sun-warmed rocks. There was a hush in the air—but a gentle one now, like the breath you take before saying something tender.
Inside the cottage, everything had shifted, though nothing looked different.
The kettle still whistled at 7 a.m.
The wind still tugged at the curtains.
Mowgli still stole socks with innocent shame.
But Aanya no longer sipped her tea alone. She no longer watched the ridge waiting for someone to appear. Rohan’s toothbrush now leaned beside hers. His books stacked neatly beside her sketchpads. Their lives had slowly, carefully, folded into each other like two pages in the same chapter.
And it felt… like home.
“You never asked,” Rohan said one morning, towel slung over his shoulder, “why I never left this town.”
Aanya paused, her spoon hovering over a bowl of soaked almonds. “I assumed you didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t. But that wasn’t always true.”
He sat across from her, elbows on the wooden table polished by time and touch.
“When Kavya died,” he said, “I stopped moving. Not just physically. I mean, everything—ambition, laughter, belief. People said I was too young to stop living. But grief doesn’t care about age. Or logic.”
Aanya reached across the table and touched his hand.
“I never knew how to talk about her,” he continued. “But with you, it’s not difficult. It’s like… she doesn’t vanish in your presence. She becomes part of the silence.”
Aanya swallowed a lump in her throat. “Maybe that’s what love is. Not erasing the past, but folding it gently into the now.”
He looked at her like he always did—without trying to figure her out. Just… seeing her.
“I think she’d like you,” he said quietly.
“Then I already like her.”
Later that day, they walked to the old ruins near the ridge. A place where time had softened stone and stories had long since turned into moss. Aanya brought her camera. Rohan brought a flask of nimbu-paani. They sat on the steps where centuries had rested before them.
“I think I’m ready,” Aanya said suddenly, camera in lap.
“For what?”
“To make this permanent.”
He looked at her. “This?”
“This life. With you. This town. This slowness. I want to keep telling stories—but maybe not just the ones people send me to find. I want to tell the ones that grow here. In me.”
He smiled. “You’re sure?”
“Sure enough to stay.”
The words weren’t dramatic. But they were heavy with truth.
He nodded once and said, “Then let’s name the seasons.”
She tilted her head, confused.
He pulled out a tiny notebook from his pocket, the kind rangers use to log tree growth and sightings.
“One for each season,” he said. “Our memories. Our markers.”
He opened to the first page.
Spring:
“Where we met.”
“Where silence held us like a blanket.”
“Where grief didn’t need fixing.”
He flipped the page.
Summer:
“Apricot jam on stolen toast.”
“Your laugh when I slipped in the mud.”
“First touch, first trust.”
Another page.
Monsoon:
“Paper boats and thunder.”
“Your note under my window.”
“Shelter offered, shelter accepted.”
Another.
Winter:
“Simi’s knock.”
“Your return from Spiti.”
“Our first night together, without fear.”
Aanya watched him write, tears silently pooling in her eyes.
He handed her the pen. “Now you.”
She took it, trembling, and on the next blank page wrote:
All seasons:
“You.”
They didn’t speak after that. Just sat side by side, her head on his shoulder, while the wind whispered around them like an old friend.
That evening, Mrs. Sharma found Aanya kneading dough with cinnamon in it.
“For the apple cake,” she explained. “Rohan’s favorite.”
Mrs. Sharma leaned against the counter, smiling.
“You’re glowing,” she said.
“I’m still scared,” Aanya admitted.
“Good,” said the older woman. “Only people who care are afraid of losing.”
The cake rose gently in the oven, filling the cottage with warmth and spice. Rohan came in just as she was setting the table.
“You trying to bribe me into loving you more?” he teased.
“No,” she said, placing the hot tray down. “Just feeding the man I already love.”
It was the first time she’d said it. She hadn’t planned it. But it didn’t feel rushed.
He stopped mid-step.
“You do?”
“I do.”
He crossed the room, held her by the waist, and kissed her—slow, sure, grateful.
“I love you too,” he said against her forehead. “I think I have since the first time you refused to eat a soft guava.”
They laughed, arms around each other, the scent of cinnamon clinging to their skin.
Later that night, as they stood outside brushing their teeth under the stars—because rituals matter—Aanya looked at the twinkling valley below.
“I used to think love had to be loud,” she said. “Grand gestures. Big words.”
“And now?”
“Now I think it’s in the small things. The extra pillow. The thermos. The waiting.”
Rohan spat out toothpaste and nodded. “Also, jam. Always jam.”
They laughed again, soft and full.
Somewhere in the forest, an owl called once, then again.
And in a cottage tucked between lemon trees and pine shadows, two people leaned into each other.
Not to be saved.
But to stay.
Part 8: And Still, We Stay
The last of spring slipped quietly into early summer. The mornings became crisper, then warm. The valley began its slow golden stretch, and the days lingered like stories retold without hurry. Aanya often found herself waking before the birds, just to sit on the porch and listen to silence before it got interrupted by the rhythms of living. It was no longer an escape. It was now hers.
Rohan had started building a greenhouse behind the cottage. “For winter vegetables,” he said, but Aanya knew he loved the structure more for its quiet promise. It was something they could watch grow—something to nurture together.
She took photographs again. Not for clients. Not for editors. But for herself. Of the way light slipped through their curtains in the afternoon. Of Mowgli curled up beside Rohan’s boots. Of the steaming mugs and half-eaten cake on rainy days. Of moments that didn’t need to be published, only remembered.
One afternoon, while trimming the wild basil near the garden wall, she found herself thinking: How strange that I once thought healing had to be loud, like triumph. But it’s really just this. Basil. Sun. His hand brushing mine without needing a reason.
The peace, however, didn’t mean the past was entirely gone.
One morning, while sorting old files on her laptop, she came across a folder she had nearly forgotten. Aryan – Final Edit. Dozens of photos stared back. Skateboards mid-air, tongue-out selfies, blurry shots of street food in Delhi, and one—just one—where he looked almost solemn. In that photo, Aryan stood beside her, their foreheads pressed, her camera visible in the mirror’s reflection behind them.
She hadn’t cried in months. But the tears came now, not with the violence of grief, but with the gentleness of missing.
She closed the laptop and walked into the woods.
Rohan found her an hour later, sitting on a low rock, hands in her lap.
“He would’ve loved it here,” she whispered as he sat beside her.
“I think he’s already here,” Rohan replied.
She looked at him. “How do you always know the right thing to say?”
“I don’t. I just try not to say the wrong thing.”
She smiled through the tears. “I still miss him every day.”
“You always will.”
They sat there for a while, listening to the breeze thread its way through pine needles.
“I want to plant a tree for him,” she said. “Not a grave. Not a stone. Something alive.”
Rohan nodded. “Then we’ll plant one. Right here.”
The next morning, they dug a small pit in the clearing and planted a plum sapling.
“It’ll take years to bear fruit,” she said, wiping soil from her hands.
“That’s okay,” he replied. “We’re staying.”
Later that week, Rohan’s sister came to visit with her twin daughters—loud, joyful girls who chased Mowgli into every corner of the yard. They called Aanya “Choti Masi” before being told they weren’t related, but the name stuck. Aanya made hot chocolate and told them bedtime stories about mountain ghosts who only haunted people who refused to finish their vegetables. Rohan laughed so hard he nearly fell off his chair.
Watching him play with the girls, Aanya thought, He would be a wonderful father.
She didn’t say it aloud. Not yet. But she held it like a warm stone in her palm—an idea, a quiet possibility.
One night, under a canopy of stars and a moth-filled lantern, Rohan looked up from the fire they’d made.
“I never asked—do you think you’ll ever go back to Delhi?”
She thought for a moment.
“Maybe to visit. To remember who I was. But not to stay.”
“And here?”
“Here is home now.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out something small—delicate, almost foolish.
A silver ring, not flashy, not cut like a statement. Just simple. Honest.
“I thought about how to do this,” he said. “But the truth is, I already know the answer. I just want to ask because it matters to ask.”
Aanya’s eyes widened, not with surprise, but with stillness.
“I don’t need a big wedding,” he continued. “I don’t even need a ‘yes’ right now. I just want to know if we’re walking this path with our feet beside each other. Every season. Every storm.”
Aanya took the ring. Held it in her fingers like it might melt. Then she smiled, eyes full.
“You’re not proposing marriage. You’re proposing a life.”
“Yes.”
“Then the answer is yes. In every language I know.”
He slid the ring onto her finger, and they kissed—not out of celebration, but from understanding. From knowing that sometimes, love isn’t a crescendo.
It’s a steady note.
A week later, they invited the whole town to a celebration—not a wedding, not quite. Just a gathering. People brought jam, sweaters, lemon wine, and enough laughter to shake the shingles on the roof. Mrs. Sharma sang. The twins threw petals. Mowgli wore a red ribbon like a groomsman who had no idea what the fuss was about.
They danced barefoot in the yard. They ate too much. They read poems under the stars. And when it got late, Rohan and Aanya sat together on the porch, their hands entwined, their future quiet but certain.
“You know what I’ve learned?” Aanya whispered.
“What?”
“That we don’t fall in love once. We fall in love over and over. With the same person. In new seasons.”
Rohan kissed her knuckles. “Then let’s keep falling.”
The wind moved through the trees like applause.
And in a cottage named Woodsmoke & Whispers, love stayed—not as a storm, not as a spectacle, but as a season that never had to end.
THE END
