Aria D’Souza
The Letter in the Library
Ayush wasn’t looking for anything that day—not really. It was the kind of Tuesday that smelled of old paper and felt like chalk dust on your skin. The school library was nearly empty, just as he liked it. A few juniors whispered near the computer terminals, someone yawned into a reference book, and the librarian dozed with a magazine on her lap.
Ayush wandered between the shelves like a ghost with no one to haunt. He didn’t have many friends, not the kind who waited for him at lunch or texted him stupid memes during class. Most days, he just moved from one class to the next like a bookmark someone had forgotten inside a book they stopped reading.
He liked it that way, or at least that’s what he told himself.
The second shelf from the bottom was where the poetry books lived. No one ever touched them. Dust made a quiet home there. He knelt, pulled out a worn volume of Tagore’s English-translated poems, and something slipped out.
An envelope.
Not yellowed like the pages. Newer. Cream-colored. The kind you’d find in a stationary shop, wrapped in plastic and promise. There was no name, no address. Just one word in neat cursive:
You.
His fingers tingled as he opened it.
To the one who feels invisible,
If you’re reading this, you’re looking for something. Maybe a sign. Maybe someone to say it’s okay not to have it all figured out. I was too.
Come to the banyan tree behind the basketball court. Thursday, after sunset. Bring nothing but truth.
No name. No signature. Just that.
Ayush stared at the words for a long time. Was it a prank? A dare? One of those anonymous games seniors played?
Still, it didn’t feel cruel. It felt like… a lifeline.
He slid the letter back into the envelope and tucked it inside his notebook.
On Thursday, Ayush couldn’t concentrate all day. Equations floated past his ears, and even the drawing he’d started during biology looked smudged and distracted. He wasn’t sure why he cared so much. Maybe because the letter had seen through something he never spoke of.
After the last bell rang, he took his time packing up. The sun was just beginning to bleed gold when he walked past the basketball court. Laughter echoed from the other side, where boys were still playing in worn-out jerseys. But Ayush wasn’t going there.
He circled around, past the back wall, and found the banyan tree.
Massive. Ancient. Its roots tangled like secrets beneath the earth.
No one was there.
He almost turned back. Then, out of instinct, he stepped closer to the tree’s trunk.
There it was.
Another envelope. Pressed into the bark, held in place with a tiny sticker shaped like a firefly.
He opened it.
You came. That matters.
I’ll be here next Thursday. But next time, tell me something true. Something only you know.
Signed, Firefly.
Ayush read the note again. A small, stupid smile touched the corner of his lips.
Firefly.
He whispered the word under his breath like a password to a world only he could see.
That night, Ayush couldn’t sleep.
Not because he was scared. But because someone had seen him—even just through paper. Someone knew what it felt like to be in the background, to move through school like a ghost trying not to trip.
He thought about what he would write back.
A truth.
Maybe he’d tell Firefly about how his parents spoke to each other like co-workers in a tired meeting. Or about how he hated chemistry but kept pretending for his father’s sake. Or maybe about the notebook under his bed where he drew people’s faces—faces he never had the courage to talk to.
Something True
Ayush waited a full week before returning. Thursday had become a quiet anthem in his head—like a whisper he followed through classes, canteen lines, and silent corridors. He counted down in notebooks, ticked days off with invisible ink, and by the time it arrived, his palms were sweating more from hope than nerves.
He carried no bag. Just a folded sheet of paper in his pocket and a strange sense of anticipation that made the world feel slightly out of focus.
This time, the banyan tree stood silent but expectant, its roots curling like fingers ready to hold secrets. The sounds of a distant basketball game floated past, but here—here, it was all stillness and waiting.
He looked around. No one.
Ayush stepped closer, placed his letter inside the knotted bark where Firefly had once left hers. Then he sat down beneath the tree. He didn’t know what he was waiting for. Maybe another note. Maybe nothing.
But he stayed anyway.
And just when he began to think no one would come, something fluttered.
A sound. Movement.
And then—there it was.
A small envelope, slipped between the roots, held down by a pebble. As if left only moments ago.
He picked it up.
Truth is hard, isn’t it?
I read yours. You said your house feels like a waiting room. That no one looks at each other for long. I know that feeling. I live it too.
Here’s my truth:
I feel like two people. One who smiles through school and one who wants to disappear the second she gets home. I don’t know which one’s real anymore.
You don’t have to fix me, Ayush. Just write back.
—Firefly
His name. She knew his name.
He didn’t remember writing it. Had he? Maybe in a rush, maybe without realizing. But now she had it.
Firefly was real. A girl. Somewhere near. Maybe even in his class.
He sat down again and wrote back then and there.
I draw people I can’t talk to. I draw their faces when they’re not looking—like Rhea laughing at a bad joke, or Mr. D’Souza rubbing his eyes during roll call.
I don’t want to disappear. I just don’t want to be invisible anymore.
And I think maybe… you’re the first person who’s really seen me.
—Ayush
He folded the note, slid it into the same bark hollow, and pressed the firefly sticker he’d peeled from last week’s envelope onto it.
It wasn’t a big act. Not even brave.
But it was honest.
The letters continued.
Every Thursday, rain or shine. Words passed between them like warm tea—nothing revolutionary, just comfort. Ayush would wait until sunset, sometimes bringing a sketch. Sometimes just a confession.
My parents haven’t asked me how I am in months. They ask about marks, but not the migraines.
I used to hum songs when I was small. I stopped when my brother called me weird. I want to hum again.
I wish I could talk to people the way I write to you.
And Firefly wrote back with gentle wounds of her own.
My mother wants me to be perfect. Even my mess has to look beautiful.
I wear black because it makes me feel protected, not because it’s fashionable.
Sometimes I leave post-it notes in library books, hoping someone kind will find them.
Each week, the letters grew longer, and Ayush began to feel lighter. Not fixed. Not healed. But seen.
One afternoon, Rhea noticed the change.
“You’ve been smiling lately,” she said, twirling a pencil in her fingers. “Did someone fall in love?”
Ayush snorted. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“Come on,” she teased. “Is it someone from class?”
He shook his head. But she wasn’t wrong.
He didn’t know if it was love.
But he had stopped feeling like a shadow.
He started to draw again—real things. Not just people, but trees, letters in wind, the gentle glow of a firefly imagined in the margins of notebooks. He slipped sketches into the envelopes sometimes. A moon with a sad face. A pair of worn sneakers under rain. A girl’s hand clutching an invisible wish.
Firefly never said her name. But her words wrapped around his days like invisible threads.
He didn’t need to know yet.
He just needed the letters.
That week, he added something new to his note.
Would you ever want to meet?
Not to talk. Just… sit beneath this tree. At sunset. Next Thursday.
I won’t say anything. I just want to know who you are.
If not, that’s okay.
You don’t owe me anything.
—Ayush
He left the letter.
And for the first time in weeks, he felt afraid.
Because wanting more than words was risky. Wanting someone to stay—that was real.
The Girl in Black
The whole week, Ayush second-guessed himself.
Maybe he had pushed too far. Maybe Firefly didn’t want to meet. Maybe all she needed was the comfort of distance—a safe space where faces didn’t matter and voices stayed silent.
Still, by the time Thursday rolled around, Ayush found himself under the banyan again, heart pounding like a drum in a crowded silence.
The sky was pale and bruised with the colors of early evening. The leaves rustled overhead like whispers preparing to speak. He had arrived early, unsure of how long he’d need to sit before his hope crumbled.
Minutes passed. Maybe twenty.
He fiddled with the strap of his watch, checked his phone for no reason, and looked up every time the wind stirred a branch.
And then—she came.
She walked from the edge of the playground, slowly, with the kind of quiet purpose you only notice when you’re truly watching. She wore black. A soft hoodie, sleeves pulled halfway over her hands, and jeans with a frayed hem. Her hair was tied up in a loose bun, and her steps were careful, as if testing the ground before each one.
She didn’t speak. Neither did he.
Ayush stood, heart in his throat, and gave her a small nod. She paused beneath the tree, glanced at the roots, the bark, the exact spot where they had traded secrets.
And then she sat down beside him.
They didn’t look at each other directly. But they didn’t need to.
The silence between them wasn’t awkward. It was charged, warm. Like the hush that fills a room before a song begins.
Ayush could feel the thud of his own pulse in his ears.
After a while, she said, “So you’re Ayush.”
Her voice was quiet, but steady. Familiar.
“I didn’t mean to pressure you,” he replied. “You don’t have to stay.”
She looked at him then. Her eyes weren’t sad—they were sharp. Alive. The kind that had seen things but refused to let them break her.
“I wanted to see you,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure you’d still want to write after.”
“I still want to write,” he said. “Even more now.”
She smiled, and it was unlike the polite smiles Ayush saw every day in class. It was real. Crooked, like something she hadn’t used in a while but was willing to try again.
“I’m Meher,” she said.
It landed softly. A name. A doorway into all the possibilities that followed.
They didn’t talk much that evening.
Meher took out a folded piece of paper from her hoodie pocket and handed it to him.
“I was going to leave this in the tree,” she said. “But since you’re here…”
He opened it.
I’m scared of being too much and not enough, all at once.
I write things in the margins because the middle of the page feels too loud.
When I was younger, I thought the fireflies followed me because I had magic. Now I think maybe they were just reminding me to glow, even when no one noticed.
Ayush swallowed the lump rising in his throat.
“I used to think I had to be invisible to survive,” he said. “But now I think maybe… I was just waiting to be found.”
Meher nodded, looking up through the banyan leaves.
“I don’t know what this is,” she said, voice barely above the breeze. “But I think I want to find out.”
They met again the next Thursday. And the one after that.
They didn’t call it anything. Not friendship. Not love. Just something soft and real they didn’t want to ruin with labels too early.
Sometimes, they exchanged letters even while sitting beside each other. Sometimes they just sat in silence, the tree their secret cathedral.
Ayush drew her once, without asking. He showed it to her shyly—a side profile, the way she tilted her head when thinking.
“You made me look kinder than I am,” she said.
“No,” he replied. “I just drew what I see.”
In school, they didn’t make a show of knowing each other.
Meher still sat two rows ahead in English. Ayush still ate lunch with Rhea. But in stolen glances, in the quiet overlap of footsteps in the corridor, there was a new language between them.
An understanding.
They were fireflies. Small, unnoticed, but full of light.
Thunder Without Rain
The rains came late that year.
The kind of late that made the air heavy and sticky, where clouds gathered and threatened but never poured. It mirrored how Ayush felt—like something inside him was swelling with too much unsaid.
It had been three weeks since Meher revealed her name under the banyan tree. Since then, their meetings had continued like ritual. Notes. Sketches. Half-sentences. Shared silences.
But Ayush had started wanting more.
Not more from her—but more for her. For both of them.
He wanted to hear her laugh freely, not just in the polite, restrained way she sometimes let slip. He wanted to know why her eyes darkened whenever she spoke of home, why she flinched when someone called her name too loudly in class.
He wanted to ask—but didn’t want to break the spell.
Until one Thursday, she didn’t come.
Ayush waited. The sky rolled with thunder, dry and threatening, but the rain never arrived.
He stayed under the banyan long after the sun dipped below the wall behind the basketball court. Mosquitoes hummed around his ankles. His fingers fidgeted with an unopened note he’d written for her.
At some point, he realized she wasn’t coming.
He slid his letter into the tree’s bark anyway. Then walked home with his shoes soaked in grass dew and his mind swirling with questions.
Meher didn’t come the next Thursday either.
No note. No sign. No explanation.
Ayush felt foolish for how much it hurt.
He told himself maybe she was sick. Or maybe her parents had tightened their rules. Maybe it was exams. Or storms. Or curfews.
But deep down, a darker thought bloomed: maybe she had chosen to disappear.
Like fireflies do—there one night, gone the next. No goodbyes. Just a flicker, then nothing.
In school, Meher wasn’t absent. That was the strangest part.
She still came to class. Still sat two rows ahead in English. Still turned her pages carefully during history.
But she didn’t look at him.
Not once.
Not even when he lingered by the water cooler longer than he needed to. Not when he dropped a sketchbook on purpose beside her bench, hoping she’d pick it up. Not when Rhea, confused, whispered, “Did something happen between you two?”
Ayush didn’t know how to answer.
All he knew was this: the silence between him and Meher had grown thick, louder than any conversation they’d ever had.
On the third week, he found a note. Finally.
Stuffed behind the tree. No sticker. No careful folding. Just a crumpled scrap of lined notebook paper.
I’m sorry.
Some days, I just disappear. Not because I want to—but because my mind goes dark and I don’t want to take anyone with me.
You were the only place I felt light. And that scared me. It still does.
I don’t know how to be close to people who see all of me.
But I’m trying.
—M
Ayush read the letter three times.
He didn’t cry. But he felt something tighten in his chest.
Not anger. Not even confusion.
Just a strange ache. Like thunder inside him that refused to become rain.
He wrote back.
You don’t have to be okay all the time. You don’t even have to explain. Just… don’t disappear without leaving a piece of you behind. Even if it’s a scribble. Even if it’s silence written down.
I’ll still be here.
—Ayush
That Thursday, she came.
Not with a smile. Not even with a greeting. Just a quiet presence beside him under the tree.
“I didn’t know how to say sorry,” she whispered after a long time.
“You already did,” he replied.
“I’m scared you’ll stop waiting someday.”
“I’m scared too,” he said. “But not of waiting. I’m scared of losing what we found.”
She turned to him, eyes a little red but steady.
“Then maybe we don’t call it waiting,” she said. “We call it holding space.”
He nodded.
And for the first time in weeks, Ayush reached out and placed his hand gently over hers. She didn’t pull away.
The thunder rolled again above them.
But this time, Ayush wasn’t afraid of the storm.
Because sometimes, holding space was enough.
Paper Lanterns
The school festival arrived like a rush of color and sound, interrupting the greyscale monotony of final-term classes. Buntings flapped on the classroom windows, announcements echoed through the intercom, and students swarmed in rehearsals and poster-making like bees around spilt sugar.
Ayush had never liked school events. Too loud. Too performative. Too many eyes.
But this year felt different.
Because this year, Meher was in charge of the Literature Club’s creative stall—and she asked him to help.
Not directly. Not like other people might.
Instead, a note had slipped into his locker two days before the event:
Think you could help me draw paper lanterns?
I want the stall to look like a poem about hope. You’re the only one who sketches like that.
—M
Ayush folded the note carefully and read it again during math class, ignoring the formulas scrawled on the board.
Later that day, he walked up to her during the break, clearing his throat softly.
“I brought markers,” he said, lifting his bag slightly.
She smiled—small, but real. “I thought you would.”
They worked in the back corridor that afternoon, away from the buzz of stage rehearsals. Paper lanterns of all sizes fluttered around them, some already painted with stars and strange symbols, others waiting to be brought to life.
Meher held one gently and whispered, “We’re writing tiny wishes inside them. Students will drop them into the well beside the library. Symbolic stuff. Corny but cute.”
Ayush raised an eyebrow. “You think wishes matter?”
She shrugged. “Not always. But sometimes writing it down feels like planting a seed, even if it never grows.”
Ayush nodded, dipping his brush into pale yellow and starting to paint a tiny firefly onto one lantern.
He was careful with it—three delicate strokes and a glow around the wings.
Meher leaned in.
“You always paint light like it’s something fragile,” she said.
“It is,” he answered. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
They were quiet for a while, the silence painted with their rhythm—her folding paper, him brushing strokes of gold and indigo.
Then Ayush asked, “Do you ever still feel invisible?”
Meher exhaled. “Less now. Not because the world sees me differently. But because you do.”
The stall was a quiet success.
Tucked beside the noisy photo booth and the overpriced coffee counter, it drew in the quieter ones—the ones who scribbled shyly and dropped their folded wishes into the old stone well with embarrassed smiles.
Ayush watched from the corner, sketchbook on his lap, occasionally drawing quick portraits of visitors for five rupees each.
Meher moved through the crowd like poetry with a pulse—never loud, never forced, just present. When their eyes met across the paper lanterns, Ayush felt something warm bloom inside him, soft and unhurried.
Later, when the crowd thinned and the dusk curled around the campus like a scarf, Meher tugged at his sleeve.
“Come,” she said.
She led him to the well.
Inside, over a hundred folded papers floated like petals on dark water.
Meher held out a lantern to him.
“For us,” she said.
“What should I write?”
“Anything true.”
Ayush stared at the blank paper square for a moment. Then wrote, in small, careful letters:
I feel seen.
He passed it to Meher.
She smiled and added her own note.
Then together, they folded the lantern, tied it gently with a red thread, and dropped it into the well.
It floated there, a little lighter than the others.
A small paper truth lit from within.
That night, as Ayush lay in bed, he didn’t reach for his phone. He didn’t scroll, didn’t swipe, didn’t disappear into digital noise.
Instead, he took out his sketchbook and opened to a fresh page.
He drew a firefly.
Then another.
Then a boy and a girl sitting beneath a banyan tree, their backs against the bark, letters in their laps, and paper lanterns floating above them like quiet promises.
And beneath the drawing, he wrote:
Some lights don’t need to be loud to be seen.
Some stories begin in silence.
And some people—once found—become the map back to yourself.
The Firefly Letters
The banyan tree looked different in the golden light of March.
Exam stress hung over the campus like a smog, thick and tense, but here, behind the basketball court, it felt like a different world. The air smelled of dry leaves and ink. Somewhere nearby, a crow cawed and a cycle bell rang.
Ayush arrived first, as always.
He had grown used to their weekly meetings under this tree, even when words weren’t exchanged on paper anymore. What had started as anonymous letters had become something else—something neither of them tried too hard to define. It didn’t need a name. It only needed to be real.
He carried a small envelope with him. Just one.
Inside it was a single letter. Not folded, not hidden. Just one truth left to give.
Meher arrived a few minutes later, her bag slung lazily over one shoulder, a notebook in her hand. Her hoodie was grey today, speckled with paint. She sat beside him without a word, knees touching, breath steady.
Ayush held out the envelope.
She raised an eyebrow. “We’re bringing back letters now?”
He smiled. “Just one last one.”
She took it. Slid out the note. Read it in silence.
Dear Firefly,
I think about that first letter often. The one you left in the poetry book like a lighthouse for someone drifting. I don’t know who you wrote it for. Maybe yourself. Maybe no one. But I’m glad it found me.
You changed everything. Not with grand gestures or promises, but by reminding me that light still exists—even when it flickers.
You made me believe that I didn’t need to shout to be heard. I just had to whisper honestly.
So this is my whisper:
I see you. And I’m thankful you saw me too.
Not just once, but every time I almost disappeared.
—Ayush
Meher’s hands trembled slightly as she lowered the letter.
She didn’t say anything for a long time.
Then: “I still don’t know if I’m the kind of person who can stay. I still vanish sometimes. I get lost.”
“I don’t mind finding you,” he said softly.
She looked at him, really looked. Not through him, not past him—but into him. The way you look at someone who knows all the versions of you and still chooses to stay.
“I wrote a letter too,” she said finally, pulling out her notebook.
She tore a page carefully and handed it over.
He unfolded it.
Dear Ayush,
You were never a bookmark. You were the story I forgot I was allowed to read.
I left that first letter because I wanted someone to tell me I wasn’t alone. You didn’t tell me—you showed me.
You stayed. Even when I disappeared. Even when I didn’t know how to say sorry. Even when I was just a voice without a face.
So here’s my truth:
You are more than seen. You are remembered.
And if you ever forget that, I’ll be here—beneath the banyan tree, with ink-stained hands and a letter in my pocket.
Always,
Meher
They didn’t say much after that.
There was no grand declaration. No kiss. Just two people, sitting under a tree, hearts full of words they finally had the courage to say.
Above them, a few fireflies danced through the branches—early arrivals, tiny stars with no sky.
And somewhere nearby, the old well behind the library still held their paper lantern, floating gently in the dark.
The Firefly Letters had started as an accident. A note without a name. A stranger with a truth.
But for Ayush and Meher, it became something more.
A way to remember.
A way to be found.
And maybe that’s what all great stories are—letters left behind in the margins, waiting for someone to read them and say:
“I see you.”
END
