"Not every goodbye is spoken. Some drift gently into the sky, folded in silence."
The days were warmer now. Not harsh. Just kind in the way spring can be— as if the world remembered how to soften.
Krish began spending his afternoons on the rooftop. It was the highest place in the house. From there, he could see the whole village— fields stretched wide, hills in the distance, the school roof, and even the edge of the forest he once walked with Papa.
The air was gentle. The kind of wind that made things want to fly.
And so, one afternoon, he picked up an old notebook— one that had run out of letters— and began tearing out the pages. Not to throw away. But to fold.
He hadn't made paper airplanes since he was little. Papa used to teach him how. "It's not about how far it flies," he once said, "It's about how softly it lands."
Krish folded the first one slowly. Crisp edges. Sharp wings. He wrote one line on the wing: "I still remember your voice."
He launched it from the rooftop. It sailed. Not far. But enough. Enough to feel like something had left his chest and taken flight.
He folded another. Then another. Each one with a line. A memory. A piece of his silence.
"You once called me your brave star." "I still wear your sweater when the nights get too quiet." "The garden misses your footsteps."
He watched them all glide— some falling fast, some dancing a little longer. None of them perfect. But none of them wasted.
Below, his mother watched from the courtyard. She didn't ask what he was doing. She just smiled, and brought him tea in his favorite chipped cup.
"You're sending messages?" she asked.
He nodded. "Maybe to the sky. Maybe just to myself."
She sat beside him. Held one of the fallen planes. Read it silently.
It said: "You taught me that silence is a kind of love, too."
She pressed it to her chest. Didn't speak. Didn't need to.
That evening, they gathered the airplanes that had landed around the house. Some in the garden. One caught in the clothesline. Two on the roof tiles.
They didn't unfold them. They tied them together with a thread. Hung them near the window. Let them flutter in the wind, like tiny wings of things not forgotten.
That night, Krish wrote:
"Dear Papa, Today I let pieces of you fly. They didn't go far. But they didn't need to. They just needed to move.
I think grief is like paper. You fold it again and again, and one day, it becomes something that can fly.
Love, Krish."
He tucked the letter into the last page of his journal. Closed it slowly. Not to forget. But to rest.
And outside, in the warm spring wind, paper memories danced in the dusk— light as love, quiet as goodbye.