⭐ The Girl Who Replied to Stars

By Waqid Ali

In the quiet village of Noorabad, where the night sky stretched endlessly over fields of silence, there lived a girl named Liyana.

She was known for saying little and feeling much. Her eyes, wide like moon-pools, often stared up at the heavens while others stared at their phones. People said she was strange, lost in her own world. But they didn’t know her secret: Liyana wrote letters to the stars.

Each night, she would climb onto the rooftop with a pencil, a notebook, and a heart too full for words spoken aloud. Her parents were gone, taken by the cruel grip of a storm five years ago. Since then, silence had become her closest companion. But the sky — the sky listened.

“Dear Stars,” she would begin,

"Today was hard again. No one spoke to me. But I saw a bird building a nest in the old mango tree. That gave me hope."

She’d write about her loneliness, her dreams of becoming an artist, her fears that she'd be forgotten like dust on old furniture.

When the letter was finished, she would tear the page and release it into the wind. Some might say that was foolish, but Liyana believed the stars could read the breeze.

And for years, she received only silence.

Until one night.

That night, the air was unusually still. The stars were brighter, clustered like whispers gathering courage. She wrote a longer letter than usual — her handwriting shaky with hidden tears.

"I feel like I am made of glass," she confessed, "People look through me, not at me. Sometimes, I wonder if I was meant to be born at all."

As she folded the page and let the wind take it, a strange shimmer glowed above her. A star pulsed once — twice — three times.

Then, a small piece of parchment fluttered down from the sky.

Liyana gasped. The paper was warm. On it, in golden ink, were the words:

"We see you, Liyana. You are made of stardust, not glass."

From that night on, the stars replied.

Each night, after she released her letter, a parchment would return — glowing softly, as if kissed by the universe itself. Sometimes, the notes were simple:

“Draw the sky. It wants to see itself through your eyes.”

“The pain you feel is the soil. Your dreams are the seeds.”

Other times, they were deeper — cryptic, even:

“Not all stars live in the sky.”

“You will meet a mirror in human form.”

Liyana began painting under moonlight, inspired by what the stars whispered. Her drawings — nebulas made of tears, galaxies formed from hope — slowly filled her room. She felt alive again. Known.

But one night, the parchment was different.

It read:

“The one you miss is not gone. He has been with you all along.”

She frowned. The one I miss? Her parents?

She scribbled back furiously.

“What do you mean? Are they alive?”

The stars answered slowly:

“Go to the attic. Open the trunk you fear.”

Shaking, Liyana climbed to the attic. A dusty old trunk sat in the corner — untouched since her parents’ passing. With trembling hands, she opened it.

Inside was a collection of letters — her own childhood letters, drawings, and... letters written to her. But not by the stars.

By her father.

“Dearest Liyana,” one read, “If you ever feel lost, write to the stars. Because that’s where I’ll be watching you from.”

She sank to the floor, tears soaking the parchment. Her stars — her companions in the night — had been guiding her with her father’s voice all along. Whether by magic, memory, or miracle, the sky had carried his love back to her.

Now, Liyana still writes her nightly letters. But she no longer writes from sadness. She writes from knowing.

Her village whispers less about the strange girl and more about the beautiful paintings that now hang in galleries across the country — paintings of the sky, filled with messages only she could translate.

People ask her, “How did you find your way?”

And she always replies with a soft smile:

“I listened to the stars. And they listened back.”