Chapter 40: The World Without Her Hands
Oriana was gone.
Not gone like a vanished photograph, or a dream you couldn't remember.
She was gone like a breath you'd just exhaled.
Still warm on your lips.
Still part of you.
But already out of reach.
Anya didn't cry the first day.
Instead, she sat by the window with the scrapbook open in her lap. The final page still blank. Not because she didn't know what to say—but because every word felt small. Incomplete. As if her pen might shatter under the weight of what she wanted it to hold.
Her mother knocked gently on the door. "Do you want to eat something?"
Anya didn't answer.
There were toast crumbs on her desk. A half-finished glass of water. The only sound was the ceiling fan clicking above, slicing the silence into pieces she couldn't gather back.
She flipped back through the scrapbook—page by page—like retracing footsteps. Her fingers lingered on the ribbon from Oriana's old dress. The inked photo caption. The petals taped so delicately they seemed to still whisper.
"She looked like she belonged to the wind. But she stayed."
Anya touched those words and felt the ache bloom quietly inside her. Not like a wound—but like a weight. Gentle. Constant. Something she'd have to learn how to carry.
The first week passed like sleepwalking.
The world didn't collapse. It didn't mourn. It kept spinning—traffic still honked, the sun still rose, and the local kids still played badminton in the park with their laughter piercing the stillness of evening.
But for Anya, everything had lost a layer of color.
She moved through days like she was underwater.
Every corner of town reminded her of Oriana—the bench by the temple steps, the rooftop of the stationery store where they used to read quietly, even the scent of sweet soy from the noodle cart made her chest clench.
On the third night, she found herself biking aimlessly through the twilight haze, Oriana's green clip in her pocket. She rode past the bookstore, the café, the shrine. She stopped in front of the train station, staring at the tracks that had taken Oriana northward. Somewhere beyond mountains. Beyond fields. Beyond reach.
She sat on the bench where they'd kissed for the last time, clutching the handlebars tightly. The platform lights flickered above her.
Then she pulled out her phone and opened a blank note.
"Hi.
I don't know if you're awake.
But the air smelled like rain today and I thought of you.
Not just because of the weather, but because the wind felt like your hands again.
I miss you.
That's not poetry. It's just the truth."
She didn't send it.
She just saved it.
And somehow, that was enough.
Oriana's first letter arrived exactly nine days after her departure.
It came in a pale lavender envelope, slightly crumpled at the edges, with tiny pressed ferns tucked into the fold. The handwriting on the front read simply: To my Anya.
Her hands trembled when she opened it.
"My dearest wildflower,
It's quiet here. Quieter than I imagined. The trees are taller, the stars feel sharper somehow. I wish I could describe the wind—it's colder, but it carries long silences that make you want to whisper. I've found a small path near the back of our building where moss grows on the stones. It reminds me of that secret forest. Remember?
I think I left my laughter in your room.
If you find it, keep it safe until I return.
Love always,
Oriana."
Anya read it once.
Then again.
Then again, until the words blurred.
She folded it carefully and tucked it between two pages of the scrapbook, adding a note beside it in soft pencil:
"She writes like the sky misses me too."
They began to write regularly after that.
Real letters—handwritten and folded and sealed with care. Sometimes clumsy. Sometimes poetic. Sometimes no more than a dried petal taped to the page and a single sentence: You are still the only season I trust.
Anya kept a box beneath her bed just for Oriana's words. With each letter, her chest hurt a little less. It wasn't that the ache faded. But it became something gentler. Something alive.
She still missed her. Fiercely.
But she was learning how to miss her without unraveling.
One afternoon, as late summer dripped toward autumn, Anya found herself back at the library, seated in their old spot near the window. The chair across from her was empty, but the light still landed just right.
She pulled out the scrapbook—her constant companion now—and turned to the final page. She'd avoided it long enough.
She began to draw.
Not words, not yet. Just pencil strokes.
She sketched Oriana's silhouette—hair half up, shoulders slouched forward like when she leaned in to tell a secret. Around her, Anya drew leaves. Not falling ones, but floating—caught in motion, suspended like memories that hadn't settled yet.
Then she wrote:
"She left, and the trees didn't stop growing.
The stars didn't stop blinking.
But the world still noticed.
Because without her hands in it, everything moved just a little slower."
She stared at the page for a long time after that. The drawing wasn't perfect. It didn't need to be.
It was honest.
And sometimes, that was the most beautiful thing of all.
Mid-September arrived with gentler skies.
Anya's world was beginning to open again—slowly, carefully.
She returned to club meetings. She spent quiet weekends with Mina, who had—strangely but surely—grown softer around the edges.
"You're stronger than I thought," Mina said once, handing her a juice box after practice.
"I don't feel strong," Anya replied.
"You don't have to feel it," Mina said. "You just have to keep going. And you do."
Sometimes, Anya caught Mina looking at her with something like quiet respect. Not admiration. Just recognition. Like she finally saw all the things Anya had carried.
Then one morning, a package arrived.
No return address.
But Anya knew.
Inside was a small notebook. The first page said:
"Our second scrapbook.
For every tomorrow we promised."
She smiled.
And cried.
And smiled again.
Late that evening, she sat by the river—the same river they had floated across together. She opened the notebook and wrote the very first entry.
"You once asked what I'd be without you.
I think I know now.
I'd still be me.
But quieter.
Like music with one instrument missing.
Still beautiful. Still real.
But waiting for the rest to return."
The wind curled around her as if in answer.
And somewhere far away, Anya knew Oriana was writing too.
Beneath the same stars.
With the same ache.
And the same love that refused to fade.