It began with the sound of water.
Not waves — ripples, like someone calling from beneath the surface.
Suhana was standing on the edge of a lake, the air cold and heavy.
She could hear laughter — a child's voice, her own maybe — and the faint splash of stones skipping across the water.
Then, a slip.
A scream.
The rush of panic and silence and hands — strong, trembling hands — pulling her up.
And a voice whispering, "You're safe now."
She woke up gasping.
Her sheets tangled, her heart racing.
Rain tapped faintly on the window — soft, rhythmic, like the echo of that dream.
Her red scarf lay on the chair across the room, half folded, half falling — its torn edge swaying like memory itself.
Suhana made coffee, trying to shake the feeling off.
Dreams didn't mean anything — just leftover fragments of thought, she told herself.
But as she scrolled through her phone, her podcast notifications popped up.
"The Space Between Us – trending again."
"People are calling it the voice of modern love."
She smiled faintly, but the compliment didn't land right.
Love.
If only they knew what kind of silence sat behind those words.
Her phone buzzed — a message from Arjun.
Arjun: "New episode idea. Want to brainstorm over lunch?"
Suhana: "Sure. But I might be a little off today."
Arjun: "Off as in… emotionally or caffeine-deficient?"
Suhana: "Both."
Arjun: "Then I'll bring coffee strong enough to fix one and conversation soft enough to fix the other."
She smiled.
Somehow, he always knew when she needed gentleness.
The café overlooked the Thames — grey water, lazy ripples, seagulls circling low.
It should've felt peaceful, but something in Suhana stirred restlessly.
"Bad dream?" Arjun asked, watching her stir her coffee absently.
She hesitated. "More like… a memory, maybe. From when I was a kid."
"What kind of memory?"
"Water. Cold. Someone saving me."
Arjun froze for a second — barely noticeable, but she caught it.
"You okay?" she asked.
He nodded quickly. "Yeah, just—strange coincidence."
She laughed nervously. "Probably my brain being dramatic. I've been writing too much lately."
But he didn't smile this time.
When the conversation drifted elsewhere — to music, the podcast's new theme — Arjun's mind stayed back at her words.
Water. Cold. Saved.
He'd read those exact phrases once — in an old report, a blurred line of text about a rescued girl.
Later that day, Arjun sat alone in the studio.
The rain outside had turned heavier — the kind that blurred the city skyline.
He pulled up an old recording file he'd saved years ago — background audio from the lake incident, distorted but preserved by his father, who'd been a reporter back then.
Through static and wind, a faint child's voice could be heard crying, "Mumma…"
And then —
"You're safe now."
His own voice.
Ten years old.
He sat frozen, listening, the weight of realization pressing against his ribs.
It was her.
Suhana.
He wanted to tell her.
But how do you tell someone that you've carried their fear, their memory, and their voice for two decades?
That the connection wasn't new — it was reborn?
He closed the laptop slowly and whispered to the empty room,
"Not yet."
That night, unable to sleep, Suhana opened her journal.
"There's a strange kind of peace in certain people.
Not the loud, world-changing kind.
The quiet, anchoring one — the kind that makes your chest loosen after years of holding your breath.
That's what he feels like.
Like home I never remembered having."
She paused, chewing the pen cap.
Then wrote another line.
"Maybe love isn't about discovery. Maybe it's about remembering."
At 11:47 PM, her phone rang.
Arjun.
"Couldn't sleep either?" she said, voice low.
He chuckled softly. "Busted. Thought maybe we could test that new mic setup."
"At midnight?"
"Art doesn't check the clock."
They talked for almost an hour — about random things: sounds, fear of water, childhood quirks.
Somewhere between laughter and silence, Suhana admitted,
"Sometimes I think the past doesn't leave us. It just hides in people."
Arjun's throat tightened.
"Maybe that's why some people feel familiar the first time you meet them."
"Yeah," she said softly. "Like echoes."
The line went quiet — not awkward, but heavy, charged, real.
Neither wanted to hang up.
That night, the dream came back.
This time, clearer.
The lake again.
Falling, choking, the rush of icy water.
And a boy — dark hair, trembling hands, eyes filled with fear — pulling her to the shore.
She couldn't see his face clearly, but she heard him whisper again,
"You're safe now."
And when she looked closer —
The boy's voice sounded exactly like Arjun's.
She woke up with tears streaming down her face, whispering into the darkness,
"It was you…"
---
Some truths don't arrive like lightning — they seep in, like water through the cracks of time.