Lili sat cross-legged on her bed, the glow of her laptop painting her face in a soft blue light. Outside her window, the suburban night of Pennsylvania lay hushed beneath a blanket of stars. It was past midnight—well past the time her parents expected her to be asleep—but her heart had learned to beat to another clock. Somewhere, half a world away, the morning sun was breaking, and with it, Dewdrop was waking.
To her family, she was the obedient daughter: a devout Christian, a diligent student, a girl with clean ambitions of medicine and service. They saw her with textbooks stacked like towers and volleyball practices that stretched her energy thin. What they did not see was the secret world she had woven—threads of messages, laughter, and stolen moments that bound her to a boy across the sea.
Dewdrop. His name itself felt like a secret poem on her tongue, delicate and fleeting, yet holding the weight of something eternal. He lived in India, where the air smelled of spices and rain, where the mornings arrived just as she was slipping into her nights. They had found each other not through chance, but through the quiet serendipity of two souls reaching out across a digital void.
Her phone buzzed. A message.
Good morning, Lili. The sky is gray here. Looks like it's going to rain. What about there?
Her lips curved into a smile—the kind that felt too precious to be wasted alone. She reached for her phone and snapped a picture of her window, where the stars glittered like scattered salt on black velvet.
It's clear here. I'll send you the stars to balance your clouds.
There was a pause, the kind that stretched between them like the distance of oceans, and then his reply came:
And I'll send you the rain, so you don't forget me when the sky is too perfect.
She laughed softly, clutching her pillow. Already, he was building metaphors for her, stringing poetry out of ordinary skies. It made her feel like they were tethered by something invisible—an unseen thread, red and unbreakable, binding two worlds together.
Her parents' footsteps echoed faintly down the hallway, and she quickly lowered the brightness of her screen. If they knew she was speaking to a boy—any boy—it would end in slammed doors and lectures about purity, distractions, and God's timing. Yet as she whispered a silent prayer before typing back, she wondered: if love was real and kind, surely it could not be wrong.
Dewdrop, do you think oceans are barriers or bridges? she asked.
The typing bubbles appeared, vanished, and returned. Finally, his answer lit her screen.
Both. They keep us apart, but they also remind us that even something endless can still connect two shores.
Her heart swelled. The metaphor lingered in her chest, like the first rays of dawn slipping past a horizon. And for the first time, Lili wondered if maybe—just maybe—the ocean between them was not a wall, but the first light of a story worth fighting for.