Time didn’t rush after that—it unfolded.
Elyndra moved through its seasons: the salt-heavy summers, the sharp-edged winters, the quiet between.
And Clara lived through them all.
She never left the city.
Not because she couldn’t, but because she didn’t need to.
Elyndra had become less of a place and more of a rhythm—a steady pulse she could match her life to.
Her second book came out in spring.
It wasn’t about love, or loss, or even healing.
It was about stillness—the kind that doesn’t mean absence, but presence.
Critics called it “uncomplicated and brave.”
She just called it *true.*
Theo designed the cover: a single window, light spilling through.
Mae cried when she read it, then said, “You finally wrote yourself free.”
Clara smiled. “Maybe that’s what growing up is—learning to stay and still be free.”
The world outside didn’t slow for her peace.
Deadlines came, emails piled up, days blurred together.
But inside that rhythm, she’d found her own small quiet—something to come home to even when she was already home.
Every so often, she’d get an email from Adrian.
Never long. Never heavy.
> Still listening.
> Or
> The rain sounds like you again.
> Or simply,
> Hope you’re well.
She’d reply sometimes.
> Still here.
> Still raining.
And that was enough.
One winter, when the sea froze around the docks for the first time in years, she stood watching the ice catch the morning light.
It looked fragile but strong—the way peace often did.
She thought about how far she’d come, not in distance, but in depth.
How sometimes, survival wasn’t rebuilding—it was redefining what you called home.
As the sun climbed higher, the ice began to thaw, the cracks glinting like threads of light.
Clara smiled.
It didn’t feel like loss anymore.
It felt like living.
Years passed quietly, the kind of time that doesn’t need to announce itself.
Clara turned thirty-five, then thirty-six.
Her hair grew longer, her laughter slower, but warmer.
She started teaching part-time at a local writing program.
Her students were young, restless, full of questions about endings and meaning.
She told them, “Stories don’t always need closure. Sometimes they just need breath.”
They looked at her like she’d said something sacred, and she smiled, thinking, *maybe it is.*
Her apartment stayed mostly the same—plants alive against all odds, notebooks stacked unevenly, the same lamp by the window.
Across the street, the old woman was gone.
A new tenant moved in, a young man who played piano late at night.
At first, it startled her.
Then, she began to wait for it—the music rising softly through the window, a quiet reminder that life always replaces silence with something.
Sometimes, she’d still walk by the pier, the one where she and Adrian had once stood, unsure and wordless.
It looked the same, but she didn’t.
The water still shifted endlessly, but she no longer needed it to reflect anything back.
One evening, she got home to find a postcard in the mail.
No return address.
Just handwriting she recognized.
> The rain’s the same everywhere, but somehow different here.
> Hope the city’s still kind to you.
> –A
She turned the card over.
It was a photo of Elyndra’s harbor, taken from somewhere high above.
She laughed softly—he’d bought a postcard from her own city.
She placed it on the shelf beside her books, between a framed photo of Mae and Theo and a candle that smelled faintly of sea salt.
That night, the piano across the street played something slow, familiar.
She sat by the window, tea in hand, eyes half-closed.
The city lights shimmered, the rain fell, the world kept moving.
In that quiet, she thought about everything she hadn’t lost—
the rhythm, the peace, the ability to begin again.
She whispered, “I’m still here.”
And maybe somewhere, oceans away, someone heard.
The piano paused, then started again.
This time softer, slower—
like a heartbeat remembering its song.
Comments (0)
See all