The snow didn't stop the next morning. It came thicker, heavier—like the sky itself was grieving in advance.
Aarav had barely slept. The medication made him drowsy, but his body fought even rest now. Meera sat beside him with a bowl of soup she had managed to coax onto the stove. He tried to eat, but only managed two sips. His hands trembled too much to hold the spoon.
She didn't ask him to try again. She simply set the bowl aside and wiped his lips with the corner of her shawl.
"I feel like a child," he mumbled, his voice low, like it was borrowed from someone else.
"You're my child," she said gently, pressing a kiss to his temple. "And also my man. And my miracle."
He gave a tired smile.
"I think I dreamed of a train," he whispered after a while. "It was waiting at a station, but I didn't know where it went."
"Then don't board it yet," Meera said. "Stay and watch the snow with me a little longer."
That afternoon, she read to him. Her voice floated through the wooden cottage walls, warm like a fire in winter. She picked her favorite Rumi verses, the ones he said made even death sound like a song.
"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."
He listened with his eyes closed, his fingers curled around hers.
"When you go," she said suddenly, her voice cracking, "promise me one thing."
Aarav opened his eyes slowly. "Anything."
"Don't forget me… wherever you're going."
"I couldn't forget you if I tried."
"But people move on, even the dead. They start walking toward some distant light and forget the names they once whispered into pillows."
Aarav took a shaky breath, then cupped her cheek with a frail hand.
"If there's a light… I'll carry your name into it like a lantern."
Later, it happened. Just past midnight, with the fireplace dying and the wind howling through the pines, Aarav's breathing slowed. Then stopped.
Meera didn't cry right away.
She just stared.
His eyes were still half open. His lips parted like he might still say something. She placed her hand on his chest, waiting for it to rise, even just once.
But the silence stayed.
She lay beside him for hours, listening to nothing.
The morning after his death was too bright. Cruelly so. The sun spilled into the bedroom through the window like nothing had changed. Birds chirped. The wind hummed through the trees. The world had no idea what it had just lost.
Meera bathed his body in warm water. She dressed him in the white kurta he wore on the day they moved to the hills. She clipped one of her poems to his chest pocket, folded carefully.
Then she stepped out into the cold and dug a patch in the frozen soil behind the cottage. The villagers had offered help, but she refused. Aarav had loved that patch of land—the view it offered of the valley below. "If I'm going to return to the earth," he had once said, "let it be somewhere I can still see the sun."
It took her all day.
When it was done, she lowered him in gently. Like a secret. Like something sacred.
She did not weep at the funeral.
But that night, she screamed into her pillow until her voice was ragged.
The next morning, she found the letter.
To be opened the morning after I go.
Her fingers shook as she peeled it open. The handwriting inside was unmistakably his—looping, tilted, unmistakably alive.
Meera,
If you're reading this, I've gone where I can no longer return from. But don't be afraid. I've just gone ahead to make room. I hope I left a little sunlight behind for you.
I don't know how long you'll feel lost. Maybe forever. But if I've learned anything from loving you, it's this: we are never truly alone. Even when the person we loved is no longer breathing beside us.
I hope you water the plants. I hope you keep writing poems, even if they hurt. I hope you sit by the porch when the snow comes, and smile when it lands on your eyelashes.
You were my home, Meera. Not the cottage. Not Delhi. Not the hill. You.
Thank you for loving me when you didn't have to.
Thank you for staying.
Don't follow me too soon. The world still needs your voice.
Love you forever, Aarav
She didn't cry when she finished the letter. Instead, she folded it gently, pressed it to her heart, and whispered, "I was never staying without you."
She began to unravel after that. Quietly, without fanfare. She still ate a little, walked around the house, cleaned his camera. She even sent a letter to his parents. But there was a silence in her now that no sound could reach.
Two days after Aarav's death, she stood before the cedar tree they had planted together and clipped a second letter from the box to the bark.
It read: "To Meera, two days after I leave."
She opened it with the tenderness of someone holding glass.
My brave girl,
I don't know if you're still angry with the world, or if you're lying in bed wondering what comes next. Maybe you're still screaming at the snow.
But if I know you, you're somewhere writing. Or staring at the sky. Or feeding the birds like you promised.
I wrote this because I knew you'd feel like everything was ending.
But here's what I want you to do—live two more days for me. Just two.
Not forever. Not even a year. Just two days.
Walk to the river. Laugh at something stupid. Light a candle. Read your favorite poem.
If, after those two days, you still want to come find me…
I'll understand.
But give the world two more sunsets with your eyes in it.
Love, Your sky boy
Meera folded the letter and kissed the cedar bark where it had hung. Then she lay in the snow beside his grave and looked up at the sky.
Two days.
That was all he asked.
Just two more days.
To be continued…