Her pov
Vimoksha and I had been seated for longer than either of us realized, the conversation drifting in circles the way it often did when neither of us wished to name the thing truly occupying our minds. The courtyard lay quiet around us, the late afternoon light softening the sharp edges of stone and shadow, and for a brief while it felt as though the world beyond those walls had chosen, mercifully, to still itself.
It never does.
The attendant’s arrival broke that fragile illusion without warning. He did not rush, but there was something in the way he held himself—too alert, too aware of his own breathing—that unsettled the air before he even spoke.
“Pranam,” he said, bowing quickly, “there has been an incident along the shared route near the southern stretch.”
Vimoksha straightened beside me, his attention sharpening instantly. “What kind of incident?”
“A group of commoners traveling between the borders were attacked,” he replied, choosing his words carefully. “Not by any recognized force. Naxals… or at least men who operate like them. They are not claimed, but…” He hesitated.
“But they serve someone,” Vimoksha finished quietly. The neighbouring kingdom Vajrapur.
The attendant lowered his gaze in agreement. “Yes.”
My fingers tightened unconsciously against the fabric gathered in my lap.
“And?” she pressed.
“They were intercepted before further harm could be done. Soldiers from Aaryagarh reached them in time. The travellers have been escorted safely out of the area.”
Aaryagarh.
The word settled into me before I could stop it.
Vimoksha exhaled slowly, nodding once. “You may go. Ensure the injured, if any, are attended to. I will speak with the king.”
The attendant bowed again and withdrew, leaving behind a silence that no longer felt peaceful.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then Vimoksha turned to me, his expression thoughtful, already moving ahead of the moment. “This is not random. If these groups are operating again, it means someone is allowing it—or worse, encouraging it. It won’t stay contained to the border routes for long.”
I nodded, though my thoughts were no longer fully with her. “And Aaryagarh intervening…” I murmured, more to myself than to her.
“It complicates things,” she said. “Politically, it places them in a position to claim moral ground without formally crossing lines.”
His words were measured, precise, but they reached me from a distance, as though carried through water.
Aaryagarh.
Soldiers from Aaryagarh.
Somewhere along that road, in the chaos of raised voices and drawn steel, they had been present.
And before I could stop it—before I could reason it away or dismiss it as foolish—the thought came, quiet and uninvited.
Whether he have been among them.
I did not know why that was the first place my mind went, only that it did. Not to strategy, not to consequence, not even to the safety of those travellers—but to him, standing somewhere in that unseen moment, doing what he had always done without thought, without hesitation.
Stepping in. Claiming something that was not his to claim. Saving what did not belong to him. As if it were instinct. As if it were nothing.
Vimoksha rose then, brushing the faint creases from his attire. “I should go. The king needs to hear of this immediately before word spreads in its own distorted ways.”
I looked up at him, forcing my attention back into the present. “Yes. You should.”
He studied me for a brief second longer than necessary, as though sensing the shift I had not voiced, but he chose not to question it. That, more than anything, was his kindness.
“I will return later,” he said.
I nodded again, and this time it felt steadier.
When he left, the courtyard did not return to what it had been.
The stillness remained, but it was no longer gentle. It pressed instead, filling the spaces her presence had occupied, leaving me alone with a thought I had not invited and could not easily dismiss.
He must have been there.
It was an assumption. Nothing more. A thread my mind had chosen to follow without evidence, without reason.
And yet—
I could see it.
Too clearly.
The way he would have stood, unannounced, unrecognized, moving as though the outcome had already been decided the moment, he stepped forward. The same careless certainty that had once placed words in his mouth that he had no right to speak.
My hand stilled against my lap. The thought came so suddenly that for a moment I did not recognize it as my own.
It did not arrive with reason, nor with the careful weighing of consequence that had, until now, governed every step I allowed myself to take after that day. It simply appeared—quiet, undeniable, and impossibly clear.
I had never said thank you.
Not for that moment.
Not for what he had done—impulsive, careless, infuriating as it had been. Not for the way he had stepped in when the situation had already begun to slip beyond control, when words had turned sharp reached for what they should not have. Not even for the outcome, which I had chosen to bury beneath irritation and wounded pride, because it had been easier to resent the manner than to acknowledge the intent.
And now—
whether it had been him or not, whether he had stood among those soldiers or not—someone like him had done it again.
Stepped in.
Saved what was not theirs to claim.
Saved my people.
The realization settled with a quiet force, not dramatic, not overwhelming, but persistent enough that it refused to be ignored. It threaded through everything else—through caution, through propriety, through the careful distance I had tried to maintain—and unraveled it with unsettling ease.
I should have paused.
I should have thought of what it would mean to reach out again, even indirectly. Of how a single letter, however small, could ripple outward into things far more complicated than I wished to face. Of how silence had been, until now, the safest choice—for both of us.
I should have remembered all of it.
But I did not.
Because before the thought could fully form, before consequence could gather itself into something solid enough to stop me, I was already moving.
The writing desk stood near the far end of the chamber, untouched since the last time I had sworn I would not return to it for this purpose again. My steps toward it felt almost distant, as though I were watching myself cross the space rather than choosing to do so.
But the quiet truth of it remained.
I had never really said thank you. Perhaps I had, once, but never properly—never in the way the moment deserved.
And for reasons I could neither justify nor fully understand, that left something unfinished.
My fingers closed around the pen.
The first stroke came easier than it should have.
I began with truth.
The ink settled into the page, steady despite the faint tension I could feel beneath it, each word forming without hesitation, without the usual pause that separated thought from expression.
Because this time, I was not writing to be understood.
I was writing because something within me refused to remain unsaid any longer.
Gratitude, yes—but not only that.
There was irritation still, sharp and alive in the spaces between the lines, unwilling to be softened into politeness. There was confusion, threaded quietly beneath it, and something else I did not allow myself to name, only to acknowledge in the way my hand did not falter as it moved.
I did not think of how it would be received.
I did not think of whether it should be sent.
I did not think of him reading it.
Because if I had—
I might have stopped.
And so I didn’t allow myself to.
The words came as they were, unfiltered, unshaped into something safer, each line carrying more than I had intended to place into it and yet exactly what I could not seem to hold back.
Hey, soldier—
I heard, from somewhere between hurried reports and quiet conversations, that soldiers of Aaryagarh intervened along the southern route and brought some of our commoners to safety.
I do not know if you were among them.
Perhaps you were not.
Perhaps you had nothing to do with it at all.
And yet, for reasons I will not attempt to justify, the thought of you standing there arrived before anything else did, and it has not quite left since.
It is a strange thing, to realize that I never said what should have been said the last time something like this happened.
Not because I did not think of it.
But because I chose not to.
I had decided, quite firmly, that the manner in which you spoke that day was enough reason to ignore everything else that followed. It was easier to hold on to that than to acknowledge what it might have meant otherwise.
That choice, it seems, was mine alone.
And so, I am correcting only that.
If you were there, then you have done something that will not remain small to those who were saved, even if it remains nothing to you.
If you were not, then consider this meant for whoever stood where they did not have to stand, and acted where they were not required to act.
Either way, it deserves to be said once.
Thank you.
Whoever stood there—whether known or unknown to me—did not do so without consequence, and those who were protected will carry that moment forward long after it ceases to matter to anyone else.
For that, it deserves to be acknowledged.
Nothing more is required of this.
--mute wife
When I finished, I did not linger over the words.
There was nothing within them that required reconsideration, nothing that had been written in haste or excess. If anything, they had been held back too carefully, shaped into something that could not be misunderstood even if one tried.
That had been the intention.
I set the pen aside.
For a brief moment, my gaze rested on the letter, tracing the lines not for their meaning, but for their restraint. It held nothing of what I had not allowed it to hold, and perhaps that was the only way this could exist without becoming something else.
Without becoming something I did not want it to be.
I folded it once.
Neatly.
I remained seated for a while, the folded page resting beneath my fingers, as though keeping it there a moment longer might delay what came next. But delay, I had learned, rarely changed anything. It only made the eventual step feel heavier than it needed to be.
So, I rose.
“Gauri,” I called, my voice even, though it felt as though it had travelled a greater distance than the few steps between us.
She came almost immediately, as she always did, though there was a flicker of curiosity in her expression the moment she saw me standing by the desk instead of seated in the courtyard where I had left her earlier.
“Megha—”
Before she could ask anything further, I held the letter out to her.
She took it instinctively, but her brows drew together the moment her fingers closed around it, her gaze lifting back to mine with quiet suspicion.
“Another letter?”
There was no accusation in her voice, but there was enough awareness to make the word another linger longer than it should have.
I nodded once. “Yes.”
Her frown deepened slightly. “But… you said everything you needed to say in the last one.”
“I did.”
“Then what is this?”
For a brief second, I considered answering differently—something more distant, more detached, something that would not invite further thought.
But there was no need for that here.
“This,” I said simply, “is just a thank you.”
She blinked, as if the words had not arranged themselves into sense quickly enough.
“To that bloody solider?” she asked, a hint of disbelief slipping through before she could restrain it.
“To that poor solider,” I corrected, though the distinction felt thinner than I intended it to.
Gauri studied me more closely now, her silence carrying far more than any question she might have spoken aloud. She understood more than most did, and that was precisely why I trusted her—and precisely why nothing about this would remain unnoticed to her.
After a moment, she asked the question I knew was coming.
“If he writes back this time?”
I shook my head before she could finish the thought.
“He won’t.”
The certainty in my own voice surprised even me.
Gauri tilted her head slightly, unconvinced. “How can you be so sure?”
I paused.
It was not a question I could answer in any way that would make sense outside of what I had come to understand in quiet, unspoken ways.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, the honesty of it settling more easily than I expected. Then, after a brief moment, I added, softer but steadier, “But I know he won’t. Not unless I want him to.”
The words lingered between us.
Not as a claim.
Not as confidence.
Just… as something understood without needing explanation.
Gauri did not respond immediately. Instead, she looked at me as though she were weighing whether to ask more, whether to press against that certainty and see what lay beneath it.
She didn’t.
She never did, when it mattered. Or she just know I won’t listen.
I pressed the letter more firmly into her hand, closing her fingers around it before hesitation could return.
“Just go.”
For a brief moment, she held my gaze, something unspoken passing through her expression—concern, perhaps, or quiet acceptance of something she chose not to name.
Then she exhaled softly, the tension easing from her shoulders.
“…Alright.”
She turned to leave, the letter held carefully, not as something fragile, but as something she understood carried more weight than it appeared to.
I watched her go, the soft sound of her footsteps fading into the corridors until the space around me was still once more.
But this time, the stillness did not feel uncertain.
It felt… settled.
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