A week after posting her painting Thread by Gold, Amrita found herself staring at the blank half of her studio wall. It had once been part of her personal mural—stories she had painted during sleepless nights and tearful dawns. But somewhere between grief and silence, she had stopped.
Now, she wanted to begin again.
"I'm painting the wall," she declared one morning, her voice full of quiet resolve.
Tushar was seated on her kitchen counter, sipping tea and flipping through her sketchbooks. "Finally. That white patch was bothering me more than I cared to admit."
She smiled. "I thought I'd paint us again."
"You've already done that."
"Not like this," she said, reaching for her brushes. "Not the past us. The now us. The ones who broke and returned."
Tushar paused. "And what do we look like now?"
She shrugged. "Stronger. A little less naive. Still holding that thread."
They moved the furniture aside, covered the floor in sheets, and opened the windows wide. Amrita mixed colors with the careful attention of someone rediscovering joy. Shades of gold, twilight blue, and burnt sienna spread across her palette.
Hours passed as strokes covered the bare plaster. Tushar didn't leave her side. He handed her tea, adjusted the ladder, even added tiny stars when she asked. And in between colors and laughter, memories resurfaced—some raw, some comforting.
"Remember the time we got stuck in the rain outside the school gate?" she asked, dabbing a pale streak onto a hill.
He chuckled. "You made me share my samosas because your umbrella flew away."
"You ran after it like it was your homework."
"It was our homework," he reminded her. "We'd written poems on those papers."
Amrita laughed, the kind that reached her eyes and softened the tight lines on her forehead. "We've always been chasing things, haven't we?"
He looked at her thoughtfully. "Some things are worth chasing."
By evening, the mural had begun to take shape. Two figures stood beneath an enormous tree, roots and branches intertwining in impossible ways. Above them, golden threads hung like stars, anchoring them in place.
"Where does this tree come from?" he asked.
"My dreams," she said. "Every time I'm lost, I see this tree. It doesn't speak, but it's always there."
Tushar stood silently, tracing the outline of one of the branches. "You should name it."
She considered that. "I think I'll call it Dharohar."
He raised an eyebrow. "Legacy?"
She nodded. "Yes. Because not all legacies are inherited from blood. Some we build. Some we protect. Like this friendship."
They sat quietly on the floor, backs against the opposite wall, paint on their hands and satisfaction in their chests.
"Tushar," Amrita said softly, "thank you."
"For what?"
"For showing up. Again. And again. Even when I couldn't."
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "Always."
Moral: True friendship is a legacy—not of blood, but of presence, loyalty, and moments that outlast the silences between them.