Alden Reyes woke before the sun, as he always did. The bakery downstairs had already begun its quiet hum—yeast rising, ovens warming, the scent of sugar and smoke curling through the floorboards. His studio apartment was small but lived-in: sketchbooks stacked like bricks, coffee rings on the windowsill, and a single lamp that cast everything in amber.
He sat at his desk, pencil in hand, tracing the outline of a lamppost he’d seen the day before. It leaned slightly, like it had grown tired of standing straight. Beneath it, he sketched a boy with a kite, the string tangled in the wind. Alden didn’t draw for beauty. He drew to understand things that words couldn’t hold.
As he flipped to a fresh page, something slipped out from the back of his sketchbook—a postcard. He frowned. It wasn’t one he remembered placing there. The edges were soft with age, the corners bent. On the front was a faded illustration: two children beneath a painted star, their hands pressed together like they were sealing a secret.
He turned it over. In looping, uneven handwriting, it read:
“Promise: meet when stars fall again. —M.”
Alden stared at the card. The silhouette of the boy looked familiar—slouched posture, paint-stained sleeve, the way his head tilted slightly to the left. It was eerily close to the sketch he’d just drawn. His chest tightened, a sensation like memory knocking from the inside.
He hadn’t thought about that summer in years. The mural. The promise. The girl with the coral ribbon in her hair who laughed like she didn’t know how to be afraid.
Mira.
He tucked the postcard into his sketchbook pocket and leaned back in his chair. Outside, the town was waking slowly. Vendors rolled carts into place. A dog barked once, then settled. Alden watched the light shift across the floor and felt, for the first time in months, like something was about to begin.
Later that morning, he wandered through the square. The mural was still there, faded but defiant. A painted star, half-peeled, stretched across the old school wall. Children passed it without noticing, but Alden paused. He traced the air in front of it, remembering the feel of wet paint on his fingers, the way Mira had insisted they use blue “because it felt like sky.”
He hadn’t seen her since they were twelve. She’d left without warning, and he’d stayed, sketching the town into a thousand quiet corners. He told himself he didn’t mind. But the postcard said otherwise.
Alden pulled out his sketchbook and began to draw the mural again, this time adding the two children beneath it. He gave them shadows. He gave them hope. Furthermore, he gave them a second chance.
That evening, as the sun dipped low and the bakery’s windows glowed, Alden sat on his balcony with a cup of lukewarm coffee. He flipped the postcard over again, tracing the letters with his thumb.
“Meet when stars fall again.”
He didn’t know if Mira remembered. He didn’t know if she’d ever come back. But the mural was still here. The promise was still here. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
