The winds over Tso Moriri were cold enough to sting through the layers of canvas.
Dawn crawled slowly down the ridges, painting the snowfields in faint gold.
Beyond the line of rescue tents, soldiers moved quietly between signal posts, their silhouettes vanishing in clouds of their own breath.
Inside one of the tents, Shishta sat on a folding cot beside a humming field heater. Her hands were wrapped around a tin mug, the steam long gone cold. On the table before her lay the cracked remains of an Upfo, the same one that had shielded her, Dhrithra, and Kameshva in the mishap yesterday.
The metal shell was charred, the inflation seams torn open where pressure had once saved their lives.
She stared at it for a long time, her reflection fractured across its curved visor.
Then her fingers found the side panel,the small serial mark she remembered Kriday tracing when he handed it to her. For an instant, the tent dissolved into memory: Same cliff, the school trip, a thrown sports gear spinning through the air, her quick reflex as it smacked against her palms, and Kriday's anxiety.
The face flashed in her mind when he'd pressed the helmet into her hands.
She had teased him for worrying too much then.
But she realized that because of it only she has survived til now.
The wind outside keened across the valley, rattling the tent poles. Somewhere a flare hissed upward, painting the snow in brief crimson. The visor caught that light, and for a fleeting moment it glowed—like a heartbeat pulsing through the steel.
Shishta smiled faintly.
"You always found a way to protect me," she murmured, the words lost in the wind.
She set the helmet down gently on the blanket, her fingers lingering over the dented crest as though sealing a promise. Then she stepped outside.
The mountains stretched endlessly before her—silent, immense, eternal.
And as the first full beam of sunlight broke over Tso Moriri, she could almost feel another dawn rising somewhere far beyond—
in Dwitansh, in memory, and in the unspoken bond that time itself could not erase.
And the place just vacated, now immerses self with small green twigs sprouted throughout.