CHAPTER TWO

It was a Sunday morning, and the sky was the color of wet ash. Elara sat cross-legged on the observatory floor, surrounded by scattered star maps and her notebook, sipping lukewarm tea. The telescope stood like a sentinel beside her, watching the clouds roll in.

She had just finished taping a new page to the wall-What if healing feels like forgetting?-when her phone buzzed. Not hers, actually. Her aunt's. The sound echoed from the kitchen window of the house on the hill.

She ignored it.

Then it rang again.

And again.

Minutes later, her aunt appeared at the observatory door, her face pale and unreadable. She held the phone like it was something fragile, something dangerous.

"Elara," she said, voice tight. "It's your father. He called."

Elara froze.

She hadn't heard that name spoken aloud in months. Not since the funeral. Not since he disappeared into his own grief, leaving her behind like a shadow he couldn't bear to face.

"He wants you to come home," her aunt continued. "He says he's ready. That he's... trying."

Elara stared at her, the words slow to register. Home. What did that even mean anymore?

The observatory had become her home. The stars, her companions. The silence, her language.

She looked around at the walls, covered in questions. At the telescope, now alive again. At the place that had held her when no one else could.

"I don't know," she whispered.

Her aunt stepped closer, softer now. "You don't have to decide today. But he's asking. And maybe... maybe it's time."

Elara nodded, but her heart felt like a constellation torn in two.

That night, she didn't write. She didn't whisper to the stars.

She just lay beneath them, wondering if going back meant losing everything she'd found.

She start to think the time where she lose the meaning of HOME.

The memory came without warning.

Elara was sitting in the observatory, tracing the edge of a star map, when the scent of cinnamon and citrus drifted through her mind. Her mother's tea. The kind she brewed every Sunday morning, humming softly to a song Elara never knew the name of.

Suddenly, she was back there.

Back in the kitchen with sunlight spilling across the tiles. Her mother danced between the stove and the sink, barefoot, hair tied up in a messy bun, singing off-key and laughing like the world couldn't touch her.

"Stars are just stories waiting to be told," she used to say, handing Elara a steaming mug. "You just have to learn their language."

Elara would sit at the counter, legs swinging, notebook open, scribbling constellations and questions. Her father would peek in from the living room, teasing them both for being "too cosmic for breakfast."

It was a house full of light. Of noise. Of love.

Until the silence came.

Until the phone call. The rain. The shattered windshield. The funeral where her father didn't speak, just stared at the ground like it held answers he couldn't find.

After that, everything dimmed. Her father stopped looking at her. Her notebook stayed closed. And the stars-once full of stories-became reminders of everything she'd lost.

Back in the observatory, Elara blinked away the memory. Her tea had gone cold. The sky outside was turning gold.

She whispered to the telescope, "I remember now."

Elara sat on the observatory steps, her notebook unopened beside her, the sky above her heavy with clouds. The call from her father echoed in her mind like a distant thunderclap—unexpected, jarring, impossible to ignore.

She hadn't spoken to him since the funeral. Not because she didn't want to, but because he hadn't tried. His grief had swallowed him whole, and hers had been left to drift alone.

Now he wanted her back.

She stared at the telescope, at the walls covered in questions and memories. This place had become her voice when she had none. Her refuge. Her rebirth.

But the thought of home—of the house where her mother's laughter once lived—pulled at her like gravity.

She imagined walking through the front door again. Would it smell the same? Would her room still have the glow-in-the-dark stars they'd stuck to the ceiling together? Would her father look her in the eye?

She didn't know.

That night, she wrote only one sentence in her notebook: Can you go back to a place that broke you and still find something whole?

She didn't have the answer.

But she knew she had to try.

She had a feeling that going back will answer all her questions.

THE NEXT DAY

Elara arrived just after sunset, the sky still blushing with the last traces of gold. She carried no tea, no notebook—only herself and the weight of goodbye.

The observatory greeted her like it always had: with silence, with stillness, with open arms.

She walked the perimeter slowly, fingertips grazing the walls covered in her taped thoughts. Some were curling at the edges now, faded by time and sunlight. She read them one by one, like pages of a diary she hadn't meant to write.

What did Mom see in the stars? Can a place remember you? If stars die, why do they still shine?

She smiled, just barely. These weren't just questions anymore. They were pieces of her—proof that she had survived the storm.

Climbing the tower one last time, she adjusted the telescope with practiced ease. The sky was clear, a velvet canvas scattered with light. She found her favorite constellation—the one she'd named Mom's Laugh—and whispered, "I'm going home."

Not because she was ready. But because maybe healing wasn't about staying in the safe places. Maybe it was about carrying them with you.

She left the telescope uncovered. Left the star maps on the table. Left the door unlocked.

Someone else might find this place. Someone else might need it.

And when she stepped outside, the stars didn't say goodbye.

They simply kept shining.

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