Moonlight in Your Name

The wind carried the scent of jasmine that night, a fragrance only he ever noticed. Aayan stood at the edge of the lake, the moon above him calm and perfect, like the silence she used to love. He closed his eyes. It had been exactly three years since she disappeared without a word—vanished like smoke, leaving behind only memories and one lingering question: Why?

People said she was a dreamer, and dreamers often drift too far. But Aayan knew better. Noor wasn’t just a dreamer—she was a world all by herself.

They met beneath this very sky.

Noor had a way of speaking with the moon, or at least that's what she claimed. “When you can't say it out loud,” she had once whispered to him, “say it to the moon. It carries secrets farther than prayers.”

He used to laugh, but now he finds himself doing just that—murmuring broken apologies to the sky.

Tonight was no ordinary night, though. The air shimmered with a strange quiet, and something about the moon felt... closer. As if it were leaning in to listen.

---

Three years ago, Noor had painted his name on a canvas with silver ink and said, “If I could, I’d tattoo your name on the moon.”

He had replied, “Why not my heart?”
She smiled then. “Because the heart forgets. The moon doesn’t.”

---

And now he stood here, trying not to forget. But even memory betrays the lonely.

Suddenly, a flicker in the water caught his eye. He stepped closer. There—reflected in the ripples—was not just the moon, but writing. His name.

Aayan.

He blinked and looked up. The name hovered faintly, etched across the moon’s glow in shimmering silver like Noor’s old ink. He staggered back. “What the…”

Then a whisper, softer than wind, brushed his ears:
“You still hear me.”

“Noor?” he breathed.

She appeared not from behind trees, not from the shadows—but in the moonlight itself. Her outline emerged like mist, slowly forming into the woman he remembered—barefoot, wearing the same ivory dress from their last night together.

“You're not real,” he said, voice cracking.

“I wasn’t real to many,” she said, her voice a melody of sorrow and joy. “But I was real to you.”

He wanted to hold her, to rush forward, but something in her eyes kept him still—eyes that no longer belonged to this world. “Where did you go?”

“I crossed a door I didn’t know I had opened,” she said, glancing at the sky. “I followed a story too far. But I left part of me here... in the moonlight. In your name.”

Aayan was trembling. “Why didn’t you come back?”

“I tried,” she said, tears lining her face though they never fell. “Every full moon, I wrote your name in the light. But you never looked up—until tonight.”

He dropped to his knees. “I was broken without you.”

“You weren’t broken. You were waiting. And now, you’ve found me.”

He looked up. Her form was dimming, the glow around her weakening. Panic surged through him. “Don’t leave again. Please.”

“I don’t want to,” she said, stepping forward. “But my time in this sliver of light is short. You have to let me go. But first—let me show you something.”

She reached out and touched his chest. His heartbeat slowed. The lake vanished. The stars spun.

Suddenly, he stood beneath the sky of their first night together—stars shining brighter, the wind younger, the laughter of Noor echoing in the air. He watched her dance barefoot under the moon, alive again, like a memory replayed with perfect clarity.

When he blinked, they were back. The vision faded, but her voice stayed.

“Don’t grieve me, Aayan. Remember me.”

And with that, Noor began to dissolve into strands of silver light, each thread rising into the air like soft music. Her final words lingered:

“Whenever you feel alone, whisper to the moon. I’ll hear your name.”

---

Aayan stayed there till morning. The silver writing on the moon had faded, but something inside him had changed.

No longer did he chase answers in the dark. Instead, he wrote her name in the air every night with closed eyes and an open heart.

And sometimes, when the world grew quiet and the moon was full, he swore he could feel her hand in his, walking beside him in the glow.

Not every love story ends in forever.
Some become part of the stars