"The Silence Between Stars"

Chapter 1 : The Girl Who Never Returned Letters

There was a place where even the stars seemed quieter — a small Norwegian town lost in snow and silence, forgotten by maps, remembered only by the ones trying to disappear. The kind of place where winter wasn’t a season, but a sentence. Where the roads forgot where they led. And where sorrow didn’t knock — it lived in the walls.

In the heart of this town stood an old library, whitewashed by snow and time. It smelled of ink, forgotten stories, and dust that felt like it remembered laughter. Inside worked a girl named Anaya Roy — or as most called her, the ghost in the grey sweater.

She didn’t speak much.

Didn’t smile.

Didn’t lift her head when you said her name.

Her life moved in quiet patterns.

She arrived when the sky was still grey.

She shelved books like they were fragile memories.

She left before the sun remembered to set.

But what made her different wasn’t her silence.

It was what she never did.

She never returned letters.

Every Monday, the postman came through the snow-covered lane. He’d drop envelopes on the library counter. Sometimes cream-colored, sometimes covered in watercolor sketches, sometimes with pressed flowers inside. But always addressed to one name: Anaya.

She’d collect them without a word, her eyes never meeting his.

Then she’d place them gently inside the bottom drawer of her desk.

And lock it.

Always.

The townspeople noticed, of course.

“She must be waiting for someone,” said the baker.

“No, she’s given up,” whispered the woman who ran the floral shop.

But no one asked her.

No one dared to.

Because everyone remembered Aarav Mehra.

He came to this town with her four years ago — a boy with tired eyes, poetry in his hands, and chaos in his mind. He used to sit in the library with her, sketching stars on napkins and writing stories he never finished. He smiled like he was holding back tears. He loved like the world was ending.

And then… one winter, it did.

That morning, the sky was grey and cruel. Anaya had shouted — or maybe she had cried. The neighbours heard her voice but not the words. And when they looked outside, they saw Aarav walking away, his back hunched, scarf dragging behind him like a farewell he wasn’t ready to give.

Hours later, they found that same scarf at the edge of the frozen lake.

No footprints. No note. No body.

Just silence.

They said he drowned.

That the lake swallowed him.

That grief was heavier than water.

But Anaya… she didn’t believe it.

Because she was the reason he left.

The last words she ever said to him were:

> “You’re not the boy I loved anymore.”

She meant: You’ve changed and I’m scared. I don’t know how to reach you anymore.

But he didn’t stay to understand.