The Last Letter From Her

The first time Ayaan saw Zara, she was barefoot on the bank of the River Chenab, laughing at a flock of pigeons that had startled into flight. She wore a mustard shawl and held a half-eaten mango in one hand. He had come to the village for just a few weeks, an escape from city life, but that moment became the axis on which his heart quietly turned.

She looked at him and smiled. Not shy, not bold. Just aware — as if she already knew they would belong to the same story one day.

Ayaan was a photographer. A man who captured memories for others, even as his own heart remained mostly quiet. But Zara was something else — she lived loudly. She painted with her fingers, danced in the rain, and sang to herself when no one was listening. Her soul was stitched from the same sunlight that bathed the village in gold every morning.

For three weeks, they talked. On long walks beneath mango trees. On rooftops where kites tangled in wind. At night, sitting near lanterns, sharing dreams as if they’d known each other since before birth.

One evening, as the call to prayer echoed across the fields, Ayaan finally said it.

“I don’t want to leave.”

Zara didn’t speak right away. She looked up at the stars, as if searching for their permission.

“You will,” she said. “Even if you don’t want to. Cities call people back. But maybe your heart can stay here.”

He reached for her hand. “Only if yours stays with me.”

That was the night they kissed beneath the old fig tree, where even the breeze seemed to still in reverence.

But as love often does, time tested them.

Ayaan was called back to the city. His mother fell ill. Deadlines returned. Zara promised she would wait.

And she did — for months.

They wrote letters. Sent photographs. Promised futures.

Until one day, the letters stopped.

Ayaan, torn between responsibilities and longing, didn’t return until two years later.

By then, the mangoes had ripened again. The river still whispered against its banks. But Zara was gone.

She had drowned, they said, while painting by the riverside.

The villagers spoke of it gently, like a wound everyone had learned to live with.

Ayaan refused to believe it.

He searched the banks. Asked old women with fading eyes. Held Zara’s last letter in his trembling hands:

“If something ever separates us, promise me you’ll come back to the fig tree.

The river forgets most things. But not love.

Love stays.”

He walked to the tree they once sat under. The wind played with the grass like before. The silence felt heavier. But then, beneath a stone, he found a small wooden box.

Inside it — a dried flower, her favorite shade of paint, and a photograph he once took of her: smiling, eyes lit, holding a mango.

He fell to his knees, the river’s sound roaring in his ears.

Zara was gone. But her love — her presence — was carved into the village. Into the wind. Into him.

He stayed.

He rebuilt her painting studio by the riverbank. Every day he painted what he remembered of her: her laugh, her dance, her light. People came from miles to see his work — not because he was talented, but because his art ached with love.

Years passed.

One evening, a little girl came to the studio. She stared at a painting of the fig tree and whispered, “My mama sings that song you’re humming. She sings it every morning…”

Ayaan turned slowly. The child had Zara’s eyes.

He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to.

Love, like rivers, sometimes disappears underground… but it always finds a way to return.