Some wounds time does not close — it only hides them under daily smiles.
For Kavya Sharma, my sister, I was never just her little brother. I was her best friend, her secret keeper, her shadow who followed every step she took. When I vanished, her laughter vanished too. The girl who once sang until the house echoed stopped singing altogether.
As the years passed, everyone else in the family found a way to turn their pain into purpose — Grandfather into strategy, Father into work, Mother into science, and Anand into duty. But Kavya… she carried her grief quietly, like a diary she never opened yet never lost sight of.
To others, she grew into a calm, graceful young woman—the girl who smiled in family photos and kept her grandparents company. But her true life began once night fell, and the stars came out. Then, silence turned into her voice.
Every night, no matter how late, Kavya climbed to the terrace with a small telescope — a gift from Grandpa Raghav long ago. She called it "Mukul's Eye". science, andn her notebook, she had written one promise:
"I'll watch the stars until they send him home."
And she kept that promise loyally.
Publicly, Kavya made her grief look like a dream. She joined the National Astronomy Society as one of its youngest members, studying celestial alignments and cosmic energy theories. She said she was interested in the science of the stars — but her true reason was far more personal.
"She's brilliant," her professors often said. "Her stars seem almost emotional, as if she talks to them."
They didn't know she actually did.
Every night, she would whisper into the telescope as though it were a phone to heaven. "Hey, Dodo," she'd murmur, using my nickname. "How's the island tonight? You promised you'd draw me the moon next time. I'm still waiting."
Sometimes she smiled while speaking to the sky; sometimes tears blurred her view. But the sky never failed to listen.
Inside her heart, she believed one thing: if the stars had marked her brother's destiny, then the stars themselves must hold the path to find him again.
So she began to devote her studies to energy patterns — what her professors called Cosmic Frequency Mapping.
Through her academic research, she learnt how celestial alignment affected electromagnetic fields on Earth. Most of her friends studied it for marks or curiosity. She studied it as a way to bridge two worlds — hers and mine.
Publicly, her graduation thesis was titled "Celestial Clusters and Oceanic Energy Disturbances". Privately, her work carried a second name: "Project Dodo".
Under that hidden name, she worked with data collected from international observatories and satellite transmissions. She searched for abnormalities — waves that pulsed like heartbeats, light that shimmered like whispers. Every reading she collected, she coded into a system only she could understand.
In the core of these studies, one word began to repeat — Aarvak.
The same unknown word that had slipped through secret files across the house of Sharmas and Yadavs appeared in her research threads, too.
Frequency registered near uncharted marine zone – Codename Aarvak detected.
When she saw it first, she froze. Something deep inside her stirred, an intuition that no science could name.
"Mukul", she whispered, trembling, "is this where you are?"
That was the night her quiet determination turned into an oath.
Unlike her brother, Kavya did not fight battles with muscle or command. Her power came from connection — the invisible kind only empathy grants. Where others used maps, codes, and radar, she used dreams.
At first, her dreams were vague — flashes of blue light, symbols of circles, and the soft sound of a flute. Then, as years went by, the dreams grew stronger. She began to feel me—not as a ghost or vision, but as a presence.
Once, she awoke at midnight, trembling, her heart racing faster than ever. She could still hear a faint echo of laughter—the exact sound of my voice. Tears flooded her eyes as she clutched her pendant close, whispering, "That was him… I know it was him."
After that, she took her vow deeper.
She created what she called the Moonlight Circle.
Publicly, it was a small group of environmental researchers and astronomers working with her university's cosmic department. They studied energy surges around the Indian Ocean's atmosphere. But privately, the group had another purpose.
Every member was handpicked by Kavya—not for fame, but for faith. Their task was to record every instance of starlight anomalies above oceanic regions. "If destiny truly writes his path among stars," she told them once, her voice soft yet sure, "then one day, those lights will draw a map."
Her intuition amazed those around her. On one occasion, when a foreign observatory announced a sudden energy pulse in the southern seas, she predicted its coordinates hours before the official release. "I just felt it," she said simply when asked how.
What no one knew was that, at that same moment, in her room, the seven-star constellation had glowed through her telescope more vividly than any night before.
She was certain—I was alive.
From that day, she wore a faint smile again, one that resembled the old Kavya—the big sister whose laughter once filled our shared childhood.
Her vow, however, remained a secret shared with no one. Not even our parents. "They already carry the weight of searching," she once whispered to herself. "I will carry the weight of knowing."
She kept a diary hidden beneath her pillow named "Echoes of Dodo". It held her dreams, her visions, and the coordinates of every time her telescope flickered strangely.
Near the last page, she wrote these lines:
"The stars remember him. When they call to me, I will go — not to find, but to welcome him home."
One winter night, when the moon hung large and quiet over Delhi, Kavya sat alone on the roof. A cool wind brushed her hair as she looked up at the sky glowing with seven bright stars in a perfect circle. She smiled softly.
"Dodo," she whispered, "I think you're closer than everyone thinks."
The wind stirred gently, like a playful reply.
Her hand brushed over her telescope one last time before closing her notebook. "When you come back," she said, "you'll see how your silly sister turned the sky into your map."
And in that silence, the stars shimmered brighter, as if promising her that her prayers had been heard.
That was how my sister, Kavya Sharma — The Dreamseer, made her vow: not through words or evidence, but through love that refused to fade.
Her telescope remained open to the stars each night, the same stars that had taken me away.
She believed one thing above all — destiny could separate bodies, but never souls bound by faith.
And under that same patch of heaven, her voice whispered into eternity:
"Come back soon, Mukul. The stars and I are waiting."