After the Postmark

The last southbound carriage had been converted by Anton into a mobile study: an old wooden desk, a kerosene lamp, and a creaking swivel chair. The train window was half-open; wind carrying the scent of ripe wheat and the distant bitterness of hops rushed in, rustling the manuscript pages. Samira pressed the final page beneath a paperweight—a shard of ice chipped from a glacial monument, now transformed into smooth glass, bearing only a faint, pale streak.

Anton wiped a stove hook with a rag, not looking up. "Finished?"

"Finished," Samira exhaled, as if expelling a year's worth of wind and snow. "But the story isn't over."

Karim lay on the floor, drawing borders around postcards with crayons. He colored the "Apple Blossom Blooms" card with a pink-and-white background and drew a tiny green lantern in the corner. Finished, he solemnly slipped it into a brown paper envelope, sealing it with a new postmark—circular, with wheat stalks encircling apple blossoms, and finely engraved coordinates at its center: 48°N, 14°E.

"Next stop, who do we send it to?" he asked.

Samira thought for a moment, then pulled a blank ledger from a drawer—Anton's thirty-year "Book of Echoes" from his postal runs, each page awaiting an address. She picked up her pen and wrote:

*Recipient: All Still Heading North*

*Sender: Samira & Karim & Ilyas (The Part Within the Ashes)*

*Message: The charcoal has cooled, the flowers bloom, the wick bends south.*

Anton glanced at it, grinning, the missing corner of his ear flushing red in the sunset light. "Then let the wind be the postman."

The train stopped at a nameless station in the evening. Only half the signpost remained, its wood pulp bleached white by rain, yet the faint outline of an 'H' was visible. On the platform, a woman in a worn trench coat leaned on a bicycle, its basket filled with freshly baked bread. She looked up, her gaze passing over Samira's collarbone and settling on the dried petal tucked behind Karim's ear. She suddenly smiled.

"Apple Blossom Town?" the woman asked in halting English.

Samira nodded, handing her the envelope. The woman pulled a small brass button from her pocket, fastening it to the envelope's corner. Its face was engraved with the same apple blossom. Without a word, she turned her bicycle around and pedaled south. The wheels crunched over gravel with a crisp "clack," like a silent "delivery successful."

The train started again. Anton hung the stove hook beside the fireplace, the firelight dancing in the wrinkles around his eyes. "Next stop, you two get off."

Samira froze. "And you?"

"I have to keep running." Anton pointed towards the darkening fields outside the window. "There are people waiting for a light at the end of the line."

Karim ran to the window, pressing his forehead against the glass. "What about our light?" he whispered.

Anton pulled the green lantern from his pocket—the apple blossom petal inside its glass long dried, yet glowing faintly pink in the firelight. He handed it to Samira. New words were engraved on its base:

*"The end of southward is the next northward beginning."*

The train cut through a birch forest at midnight, moonlight stretching the tree shadows long, like countless paths into the unknown. Samira, holding Karim, jumped from the last carriage, landing on soft, yielding earth. In the distance, the lights of a small town flickered on one by one, like someone lighting a string of gentle stars in the darkness.

She looked back. The train whistle gave a long blast. Anton stood on the footplate, waving a wrench. The missing corner of his ear glowed like a moon with its edge sheared off, startlingly bright.

Wind blew from the south, carrying earth, woodsmoke, and the sweetness of apple blossoms. Samira hung the green lantern on a birch branch. The flame flickered, then settled, burning steadily like an unbreakable promise.

Karim pressed his ear against the tree trunk and suddenly smiled. "Sister, I hear an echo."

Samira knelt beside him, listening. Faint sounds drifted on the wind—the clatter of wheels on rails, the rustle of leaves in an orchard, the unburnt charcoal in an ice lantern, the breath of all who had written their names in ash.

She tightened her grip on her brother's hand and whispered in reply:

"Then let the echo keep traveling south."

The lantern glowed in the wind, like a star refusing to fall.

(I will update 5 chapters or more every day thereafter.I think it should be possible like this, right?)