🍒Prologue🍒
It always began with rain.
Every memory of him — of them — carried that scent of petrichor, the shimmer of water sliding down Jaipur's red sandstone, the reflection of marigolds floating on temple steps. Rain wasn't just weather to Avni; it was a pulse — the same pulse that had once synced with his.Years later, as she stood by her apartment window in Mumbai, watching another storm curl through the skyline, that familiar ache returned — gentle yet piercing. She had built a life far from where it began, surrounded by sketches and canvases that held pieces of her heart, yet none of them ever felt whole.
Because wholeness, she realized, wasn't in solitude. It was in a glance across a crowded classroom, in laughter that lingered longer than it should have, in arguments that hurt because they mattered.
Because wholeness once had a name. Krivan.
---
Back then, the world was smaller — corridors echoing with chatter, benches etched with secrets, mornings beginning with assembly bells and ending with a neem tree that witnessed more confessions in silence than words ever could.
She remembered the first time she saw him — the drizzle that blurred the morning sun, his lazy confidence leaning against a doorframe, that careless smirk hiding something deeper. She remembered how his presence always made her pause, how his eyes held a challenge she never meant to accept — and yet somehow did.
He wasn't what she imagined herself falling for. He was everything she didn't know she needed — steady where she was chaotic, sharp where she was soft, patient where she was silent. Together, they were the contradiction that made sense.
And maybe that's why it hurt the most when it all began to unravel.
---
The story between them was never written in grand gestures. It lived in smaller things — in the way he'd slide a note toward her desk during lectures, in the half-smile he wore whenever she got lost in her art, in the way her laughter softened his rough edges without meaning to.It was in silence that they found each other. And later, it was silence that took them apart.
Sometimes she wondered if he remembered the day they fought — that single argument that turned everything brittle. He had only wanted to protect her, and she had only wanted to be seen. But pride, that quiet destroyer, stood taller than both.
And yet, even after the words faded, he had left a note — one sketch, one line, one truth: "Sometimes art says what we're too afraid to."
Avni had never forgotten that. Because that line — raw, unpolished, unguarded — was the most honest thing he ever said to her.
---
Now, years later, she still painted the same way she had back then — chasing something she couldn't name, recreating skies that never looked the same twice. Her students often asked her why every painting of hers carried traces of rain.
She'd only smile and say, "Because some stories never dry."
What she didn't tell them was that every drop of rain still whispered his name. Every thunderclap reminded her of that day under the school canopy, where two cups of coffee and a drizzle had become an unspoken confession.
She remembered how he'd said, "You make silence look beautiful."
And how she'd almost said, Only when you're in it.
But she never did.
Some truths, she'd learned, don't need to be spoken. They live quietly — in unfinished letters, in art that aches, in songs that find you years later when you thought you'd moved on.
---
A knock on her door pulled her back.
"Avni ma'am?" her assistant called softly. "The exhibition starts in an hour."
She smiled faintly, wiping her brush. "I'll be there."
As the door shut again, her gaze fell on the painting drying near the window — rain falling over the old neem tree, a single figure standing beneath it, looking up. She had painted it a hundred times, each version slightly different. But today, it felt final — like the ending she'd been avoiding for years.
Outside, the rain grew heavier. She stepped out onto the balcony, letting the wind whip her hair across her face. Below, the city shimmered with headlights and puddles, its chaos softened by water and memory.
In that moment, she didn't feel alone.
Because somewhere — maybe under another sky, maybe in another city — she liked to believe he still remembered too.
That when it rained, he still paused to listen.
That when thunder echoed through clouds, he still smiled — the same half-smile that had once ruined her calm and rebuilt her in the same breath.
And maybe, just maybe, when the first drop touched his skin, he thought of her too.
---
She closed her eyes, whispering a line she'd never said aloud — a prayer, a promise, a memory dressed as hope.
"तेरे बिना भी लिखते रहे हम,
तेरे होने का एहसास.
और जब आसमां रोया,
लगा जैसा तू पास।"
"Even without you, I kept writing,
feeling your presence.
And when the sky cried,
it felt as if you were near."
The rain didn't answer, but it didn't need to.
Because love, she'd learned, doesn't always end.
Sometimes it just changes form — from words to echoes, from glances to memories, from a teenage promise to a lifelong ache that doesn't hurt anymore... but still lives somewhere beneath the skin.
And as the city blurred beneath the storm, Avni smiled faintly — not in sadness, but in recognition.
Because once upon a monsoon, love had found her.
And even now, beyond the skies,it still hadn't left.