The sky was tranquil that morning.
Ariella stood barefoot on the dew-kissed grass behind her grandmother's house, clutching a folded piece of paper in trembling hands. The ink had smudged slightly—her tears always found their way onto the page, no matter how hard she tried to hold them back. She read the letter one last time, her voice a whisper against the wind.
"I don't know if you can hear me, Daniel. I don't even know if you're anywhere at all. But I miss you. I miss you in ways that words can't hold. I miss you in the silence between songs, in the spaces between stars, in the breath I take before I speak your name."
She tied the letter to a pale blue balloon, the same colour as his eyes. It was her third year doing this. A ritual born from grief, stitched together by longing. She didn't expect the balloon to reach heaven. She didn't believe in signs anymore. But she believed in the act—the release, the surrender, the hope that maybe, somewhere, her words would find a place to rest.
The balloon lifted slowly, as if reluctant to leave her. Ariella watched it rise, her heart aching with every inch of distance. She whispered goodbye, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last.
Inside the house, the kettle whistled. Her grandmother called her name. Life, as always, waited patiently for her to return.
But miles away, in a quiet forest where the trees leaned close like old friends, a gust of wind carried the balloon off course. It danced between branches, tangled briefly, and then—gently—released its burden.
The letter drifted downward, landing softly at the feet of a man who hadn't written a single word in six months.
Jaden stared at the paper as if it had fallen from the stars. He didn't know who Ariella was. He didn't know Daniel. But he knew grief. He knew silence. And he knew the kind of pain that lived between the lines of a letter never meant to be answered.
He picked it up, read it once, then again. And for the first time in a long time, he felt something stir.
Not inspiration. Not clarity.
Just the quiet pull of a stranger's sorrow—and the sudden, inexplicable need to respond.