"I'm not afraid of losing him...
I'm afraid of losing the possibility that he might one day turn around."
---
The sky above Edinburgh was a murky sheet of ash, as if the morning had forgotten how to turn blue. A light mist traced the windows of The Quill & Rain café, kissing the glass like memories unsure of their return. Outside, ginkgo leaves lay scattered in golden halos—quiet, unclaimed goodbyes that no one would hear.
Aerish Elowen sat in her usual corner. The wooden table bore scratches from pens long forgotten, the bricks on the wall tinged with faded moss, and a large window stretched beside her, framing a rainless sky that looked like it might weep at any moment.
She didn't come for coffee.
She came for silence.
Her right hand held a pen. Her left cheek rested against the cold edge of her fingers. A cup of cinnamon tea sat untouched, letting its warmth fade into the air—just like the hopes she kept trying to reheat every morning, only to sip none of them.
A blank page waited in her grey journal. And in its emptiness, she found resistance.
Her eyes stared into it.
> "Why does it feel harder to write today?" she whispered.
"Is it because I know he'll come to this place—but not to me?"
She drew a hesitant line on the paper. Then erased it. The ink smeared faintly across the page, like footsteps from a heart that never dared to take one.
> "I'm not afraid of losing him," she wrote.
"I'm afraid of losing the possibility."
Possibility. Of saying his name. Of turning and finding that he turns too. Possibility that this love, hidden in anonymous letters and unnamed verses, still had space to live in the same world as him.
Then the café door chimed softly.
Footsteps. A light laugh. A scent of citrus she now recognized instantly.
Kael Renford and Sera Aurelienne had arrived.
Aerish didn't look up.
But her body knew—his presence shifted the air.
---
Kael and Sera took a table two seats away. Between them stood a shelf of old rain poems, like a wall of echoes.
To Aerish, it felt like sitting between two seasons that never truly touched.
Behind the counter, Eliah Rowan observed from a quiet distance. He placed two lavender teas before Kael and Sera, then glanced toward Aerish. A slight nod. A silent gesture.
He knew.
But he wouldn't interfere.
Aerish nodded faintly in return. She opened her journal again, drawing faint symbols along the edges—not to write, just to look busy. Just to hide the storm trembling behind her ribs.
From the other table, Kael's voice floated through the space like smoke from a barely burning fire.
—"Lately, I keep feeling like someone's… watching me," he said, almost amused. "Not in a bad way. More like... someone nearby is writing things down about me. Like I'm being turned into a story."
Sera chuckled. "Sounds like you've been reading too many novels."
Kael smiled, but his fingers traced the rim of his cup slowly.
—"Or maybe it's just a strange feeling. But... there's this weird sense that some of the lines I've been reading lately—especially in the poems—they feel too familiar. Like... someone already knows how I think."
Aerish held her breath.
> If only you knew, Kael...
If only you understood the silence that shaped those lines.
Sera leaned back. "You're becoming poetic, Renford."
Kael said nothing more. His gaze drifted to the wall of the café, where handwritten verses adorned the bricks—left behind by anonymous patrons. One, in particular, caught his eyes:
> "I love you in the quietest form—
One that never interrupts your life."
He read it aloud softly.
And something in him paused.
—"Why does that feel like I've read it before?" he murmured.
Aerish's pen halted above the page.
> Because it's mine, she wanted to scream.
It's my line, left in places you passed by without ever seeing me.
She wrote slowly, her fingers stiff but precise:
> "If you feel something unexplainable,
Maybe it's not your imagination.
Maybe it's me."
Just then, Kael stood to retrieve a book from the nearby shelf.
Two steps.
Their eyes met—briefly, gently.
No recognition.
No smile.
Just two strangers sharing a second… and leaving it behind.
---
Night fell without ceremony.
The sky above Elmsworth wasn't truly dark, just dim like paper left out too long beneath a tired sun. Mist hovered above the rooftops. Damp leaves clung to windowpanes. The wind carried the scent of soil not yet touched by rain.
Aerish walked slowly along the cobblestone path, her bag heavy with silence.
Inside: two books. One unfinished poem. And a journal that never needed a lock—because it held no secrets, only truths too fragile for the world to speak out loud.
She reached her room and lit a single candle.
It flickered by the windowsill, dancing like breath from a weary heart.
She opened her journal.
Last night's final line stared back at her:
> "If you feel something unexplainable, maybe it's me."
She ran her fingers over the ink. Then, she wrote again—not a poem this time. Just thoughts… almost like a prayer.
> "I don't write to be heard.
I write to remind myself I was here—
around you, inside the air you breathed,
in the pauses you thought were meaningless."
> "I don't love you to be loved back.
I love you so I don't lose myself in the silence."
> "And if you never find out...
It's okay.
Because I didn't write to be remembered—
I wrote to survive."
The ink ran low.
But it didn't stop.
She tore the page slowly, folded it three times, and slipped it into a copy of Letters to a Young Poet—one she knew Kael often borrowed. It was now among the returned books waiting in the university library.
He would read it. Or maybe not.
But that wasn't the point.
Tonight, for the first time, Aerish wrote not to be understood—but to protect herself from losing the one thing she still had.
Possibility.
---
The next morning...
Eliah Rowan, ever quiet and unreadable, was sorting through the returned books in the university archive.
He found Letters to a Young Poet. A folded page slipped from its spine and landed on the wooden floor.
Eliah picked it up and read it—once.
Then twice.
He smiled. Not because he was happy.
But because he understood.
Someone out there, who had been loving silently all along, had finally taken one quiet step toward herself.
He didn't return the letter to the book.
He kept it.
One day, maybe, he would place it in the right hands.
But not today.
Today, let love remain a possibility.
And from the windows, the drizzle that had lingered finally fell—gently, as if the sky too had learned to let go, a little at a time.
---
"Today,I didn't write to be remembered.
I wrote to survive the silence."