The Weight of shadow(part-8)

Episode 8: The Places We Run To Break and Begin

(~4000 words)

Elara didn't sleep the night Mira disappeared.

She couldn't.

She sat curled up on her bed, staring at her phone, refreshing her messages, opening and reopening Mira's last note as if doing it one more time would somehow rewrite the words.

But they stayed the same.

> "I just need to breathe somewhere I won't be watched breaking. I'll come back. Maybe. If I find the pieces worth returning with."

Maybe.

That one word. It echoed louder than everything else.

It was hope. And it was a threat.

Elara had seen Mira shatter slowly over the past few weeks—each silence heavier, each look emptier. But this was something different. Mira was gone.

Physically. Emotionally. Entirely.

And Elara didn't know how to exist in a world where Mira wasn't there.

---

The next morning was too bright for how Elara felt.

Sunlight filtered through the curtains like the world had the audacity to go on without her best friend.

At school, the air buzzed with murmurs.

"She ran away?"

"I heard she got sent to a hospital."

"Maybe she did something to herself—"

"Shut up," Elara snapped, standing in the middle of the corridor. Her voice was louder than she intended. Her eyes were wild. "She's not a story for you to spread."

They all went quiet.

Nobody came near her after that.

Not even the teachers.

It was just her. And the weight of absence.

---

That evening, Elara sat in the garden again. The same bench. The same wind. But it felt different now.

This wasn't the garden where healing happened.

It was where loss lingered.

She stared at the empty bench across from her, imagining Mira folded there, knees tucked, chin buried. She used to look so small. Now she felt gone.

Elara let the silence stretch, as if maybe—just maybe—it would summon her back.

It didn't.

---

The message came at 2:16 a.m.

Elara had been lying in bed, wide awake, staring at the ceiling.

Her phone buzzed once.

A single notification.

A location pin.

No text. No contact name. Just a red dot on a coastal road two towns away.

Elara sat up. Heart pounding. Hands shaking.

Mira.

It had to be.

She didn't stop to think. Didn't wake anyone. She packed a small bag, threw on a jacket, and took the first train out before the city even blinked awake.

---

The retreat house was quiet, aged, sitting by the sea like an old man watching waves crash into the shore.

She found Mira sitting on the porch.

Wrapped in a blanket. Hair unbrushed. Cheeks raw from cold wind.

Her eyes lifted when she saw Elara.

She didn't look surprised.

"You came," she said softly.

"You ran," Elara replied, voice thick.

They stared at each other like people looking across an invisible line neither one wanted to cross.

But Elara moved forward anyway.

She dropped her bag. Sat down beside her.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes. The only sound was the crashing sea.

Finally, Mira broke the silence.

"I thought if I disappeared, everything hurting inside me would go quiet too."

Elara looked at her. "Did it?"

Mira shook her head. "It got louder. It screamed. But at least... no one was watching me break."

"You could've told me."

"I didn't know how. I didn't want to say the wrong thing. Or be the wrong thing. Again."

Elara felt tears prick her eyes. "You're not wrong, Mira. You're hurting. That's not the same."

Mira looked down at her hands.

"They told me I was weak. Dramatic. That I was embarrassing the family. That I used to be bright and smart and what happened to that girl? And I just— I didn't know how to tell them that that girl is gone. That maybe she died the day they stopped seeing her."

Elara's breath caught.

Mira's voice cracked, almost childlike now. "I started hating my own name, El. Because every time someone said it, it felt like they were calling someone else. Someone I didn't know anymore."

She pulled the blanket tighter around herself. "I came here because I wanted to find her again. The old Mira. But all I found was this empty echo."

Elara didn't reply.

Instead, she took Mira's cold hand and held it.

"You don't need to find the old you," she said gently. "You can build someone new. And I'll stay beside you while you do."

Mira's eyes welled up. She squeezed Elara's hand tightly. For the first time in weeks, she didn't flinch from touch.

---

They spent the night in a quiet room. No electricity. Just candles and their shared silence.

Mira didn't sleep. She wrote. For hours. The sound of pen against paper was the only noise in the room besides their breathing.

Elara watched her from the bed, then drifted off.

She dreamed of oceans and shadows and a girl walking toward the light with ink-stained hands.

---

Back home, everything felt like walking barefoot on eggshells.

Mira's return was quiet. Her parents tried. Her mother cooked her favorite food. Her father offered a drive to the lake.

Mira sat through it all politely.

But her words were few. Her smiles fewer.

Yet… she was there.

That mattered.

---

At school, Mira moved like a ghost still, but not as invisible.

She began sitting next to Elara in classes again. She held her pencil longer before zoning out. She didn't react when people stared—but she also didn't walk away.

Little things.

Real things.

One day, Elara passed her a note during math class.

> "Do you hate mirrors today?"

Mira read it, then scribbled back.

> "Not hate. Just... not ready to look."

Elara smiled.

> "One day. I'll be there."

> "Promise?"

> "Always."

---

One rainy afternoon, Elara found Mira in the library—curled up against the window, writing furiously. Her hands were ink-stained. Her eyes focused.

"I'm writing myself back," she explained, without being asked. "Piece by piece."

Elara sat beside her. "What are you calling it?"

Mira smiled softly.

> "'Instructions on How to Return After Disappearing.'"

Elara blinked back tears. "Can I read it one day?"

"When I finish," Mira said. "When I feel like someone worth finding."

"You already are."

---

Weeks passed.

Healing didn't come in waves. It came in whispers.

A laugh shared over spilled coffee.

A walk home with shared silence that didn't feel heavy.

A doodle in Mira's notebook—two stick figures holding hands.

"I'm still scared," Mira admitted once.

"Of what?" Elara asked.

"That I'll fall again. That the silence will pull me back. That I'll become nothing."

Elara leaned close.

"If that happens, I'll sit in the silence with you. Until you're ready to talk again."

---

Then one day, Mira stood in front of her mirror.

No scarf. No tilted head. No flinching.

Just her.

She stared. Deeply.

And whispered, "You survived."

---

Later, she gave Elara a folded poem.

> "I used to think I was made of cracks.

Of soft things that shatter.

But now I think I'm just learning

how to hold myself gently."

Elara held her, finally letting the tears fall freely.

"I missed you," she whispered.

"I'm still here," Mira whispered back.

---

And for the first time in months…

They both believed it.

---

Author's Note

Episode 8: The Places We Run To Break and Begin is the longest and most personal piece of this story yet. I wanted this chapter to breathe—to give you every moment Mira and Elara lived through, to let the silence linger and the healing unfold slowly.

This episode is for anyone who has ever disappeared quietly, hoping someone would notice. For anyone who didn't want to be found—but secretly hoped they would be.

If you are surviving, stumbling, restarting—you are already brave.

If you are sitting beside someone who is barely holding on—you are a gift.

To the Miras, and to the Elaras—you are not alone.

The darkness doesn't get to win.

Not as long as you're still here.

Still writing.

Still breathing.

Until the next breath,

— Aarya Patil