Chapter 17 – Letters Never Sent
888 Words
The forest pressed close around Elias as he made his way through the drifts, the trees skeletal against the pale sky. The mark on his palm still pulsed faintly beneath his glove, a steady rhythm that felt like someone else’s heartbeat living inside his own.
By dusk, the snow had thinned. The path wound upward, where the forest broke to reveal a clearing — and there, nestled between two leaning pines, stood an old cabin. It leaned on itself, roof sagging under years of snow, windows clouded by frost.
He hesitated at the threshold. There was no smoke in the chimney, no sign of life. And yet… he felt it — that same lingering warmth he’d felt when he touched the rose.
He pushed the door open.
Inside, the air was stale, laced with wood dust and the faint scent of lavender long faded. Shadows draped over forgotten furniture: a cracked mirror, a table still holding a single candle burned to the stub. He moved slowly, careful not to disturb the stillness.
A creak of floorboards drew his attention to the corner. There, beneath a window rimmed with frost, sat a wooden box, its lid slightly askew. Dust coated it, but the hinges gleamed faintly, as though someone had touched them recently.
Elias knelt and brushed the top clean. The wood was smooth, carved with delicate roses along the edge. His chest tightened — the same pattern Mira used to sketch in the margins of her letters.
With trembling hands, he lifted the lid.
Inside lay dozens of envelopes, tied neatly with a faded silk ribbon. Their corners were frayed, the ink bleeding where moisture had kissed the paper. But what made his breath catch was the handwriting — a looping, graceful script he would know anywhere.
Mira.
He untied the ribbon. The first letter fell open easily, the parchment brittle but intact.
“Some nights I dream of warmth, though I no longer remember whose arms it was. I only know that they felt like home.”
He read in silence, his breath shallow. Each letter was a fragment — words drenched in sorrow and confusion, scrawled across days that must have felt endless to her.
“The wind calls my name, but I don’t answer. I’m afraid of what will happen if I do.”
“They told me to forget. That love was a wound too deep to heal. But I can’t. I can’t forget something I don’t remember.”
His fingers trembled as he turned the pages. The cabin groaned around him, as though the walls themselves were listening.
At the bottom of the stack, he found one unfinished letter — the ink darker, fresher. The handwriting was steadier, the words drawn with more certainty.
“It’s snowing again. The silence feels like punishment. I wonder if he’s still out there, searching. I wonder if he still believes in me the way I once believed in him.”
His throat tightened. The next lines stopped his breath entirely.
“Elias… if you ever find this—”
He froze. The rest of the sentence bled away into a smear of wet ink. The quill had been dropped, the letter left open.
He touched the edge. The ink was still damp.
A flicker of wind rushed through the cracks of the cabin, stirring the papers, carrying the faintest scent of roses. His heart pounded — not from fear, but from certainty. She had been here. Recently.
He looked around, searching for signs. A teacup, half-frozen water inside. Footprints half-covered near the door. A wool shawl draped across the back of a chair, faintly dusted with snow.
“She was here,” he whispered. “She’s still close.”
But the echo that answered him wasn’t hers. It came from the walls — a soft hum, almost like a voice caught between worlds.
“Not yet, Elias…”
The same words as before, the same gentle ache that twisted through his chest. He turned toward the sound, but there was nothing there — only the wind sighing through the cracks and the trembling candle stub that flickered to life, though he hadn’t lit it.
The light revealed one last letter at the bottom of the box, sealed with a thin layer of wax shaped like a rose. For a moment, he considered opening it. But something stopped him. The mark on his palm burned faintly, as if warning him.
He closed the lid.
The cabin fell silent again, the candle snuffed out as though exhaling her name.
He gathered the letters carefully into his satchel, the last of the warmth fading from the room. The world outside had already swallowed the path he’d taken, snow falling harder now, heavier — as if trying to erase the truth.
Elias lingered at the doorway, eyes scanning the horizon. Somewhere out there, Mira was leaving pieces of herself behind — breadcrumbs of memory, fragile but alive.
He stepped out into the snow, pulling his cloak tight, determination cutting through the cold.
“Don’t find you yet?” he murmured to the wind. “Then I’ll follow the letters until you want to be found.”
Behind him, inside the cabin, the candle sparked once — a tiny flame flickering in the darkness — then went out.
- Writer
