Amrita's return to the city was quiet. No welcome party. No dramatic posts. Just a familiar key turning in a familiar lock.
Tushar helped carry her bags into her small studio apartment. The walls smelled like paint and nostalgia. Her sketchbooks still lay where she had left them, untouched like relics.
She took a long shower while he made coffee—black for her, milky for himself. When she emerged, wrapped in a faded blue robe, she looked more herself than she had in weeks.
But beneath the return of routine, Tushar sensed a lingering hesitation—like a dancer afraid to step back onto the stage. The silence between them, once comforting, now begged for words.
"I have something to show you," she said, finally breaking it.
From beneath her bed, she pulled out a long canvas, wrapped in cloth. Unrolling it carefully, she revealed a painting—a surreal blend of two children sitting on a bus seat, holding hands as the scenery outside blurred into watercolor dreams.
Tushar recognized it instantly.
"That's us," he whispered.
"Yes," she said. "But not just us. It's the memory I've been trying to hold onto. The one that kept slipping away while I drowned in grief and noise."
He looked at the details—the strands of golden thread tied around the children's fingers. "Thread by gold," he said softly.
"I painted it on the night before my father's cremation. When everything felt like it was being taken from me. I painted this so I would remember that something... someone... still remains."
Tushar felt his throat tighten. "Amrita, I—"
But she stopped him.
"There's something else," she said. Her fingers trembled as she reached for a letter tucked inside the folds of her journal.
"It's from my father. I found it in one of his old diaries. He wrote it for me years ago, but never gave it."
Tushar took the paper from her and began to read.
> "Amrita,
I was never good at emotions. You inherited your fire and softness from your mother. I often feared you would fly too far, feel too much. But I want you to know—whatever the world says, I am proud of the woman you are. Not because of your art. But because of your courage to feel so deeply. That is the rarest gift of all.
Love,
Papa"
Amrita wiped a tear. "I hated him for so long. For not understanding me. But he did, didn't he? Quietly. Silently."
Tushar nodded. "Sometimes people love us in silence, and we only hear it too late."
That night, Amrita decided to release the painting online—not for fame or validation, but as a tribute. She titled it Thread by Gold. The comments poured in, but she didn't care. What mattered was the one that came from her heart.
As she sat beside Tushar on the balcony, watching the city lights flicker, she whispered, "I want to live louder now. Not for the world, but for myself."
He smiled. "I'll be here. Whether you whisper or roar."
Moral: Words left unsaid still carry weight—but when finally spoken or heard, they can heal wounds deeper than time itself.