In silence, I weave a melody,
Pouring quiet into verses untold.
Emptiness carved from pain,
Crushed beneath the night that devours all light.
____________________
The sky over Edinburgh that morning was veiled in a thin layer of grey. It wasn't raining, yet the heavens hung low like a blank page waiting to be written on.
Aerish wore an oversized charcoal jacket and a sage-green knitted shawl a gift from Liora the year before.
They had chosen the yarn together.
"To bind the things you haven't been able to let go," Liora had said.
Her steps echoed down the stone corridors of Elmsworth Literary Academy, passing tall columns already laced with the first ivy of autumn.
The stone floor mirrored her footsteps quiet, but not alone. She had come early, not for lectures,but to sit alone in a small hidden garden behind Arda Hall a place where poets once read their verses aloud, now nothing more than a forgotten haven that still held the scent of damp paper.
In her hand was a thin notebook filled with scattered poetry.
Between its pages lay a single line she had written the night before, just before sleep, when her thoughts drifted toward Kael once again:
Rain, even your storm is worth waiting for, beneath the blaze of my sun.
She didn't know where the line belonged.
But whenever Kael appeared in her dreams, such words would rise unbidden, like whispers from the shadows.
On the stone bench by the small pond, Aerish scribbled something more before the academy bell shattered the morning hush.
The classical literature class that morning was led by Professor Emeric Halden.
The lecture hall was on the third floor, its tall windows overlooking a miniature labyrinth garden.
The room was steeped in the scent of old books and pinewood,mingled with the dry musk of aged manuscript copies.
Portraits of long-departed poets lined the walls, their eyes following every student's step with quiet vigilance.
Professor Halden wore a deep brown tweed coat, round spectacles,
and spoke as if reciting
poetry even while reading the attendance.
He never used slides or chalkboards.
Instead,he taught through questions and prolonged silences.
"Why are great poets always loved too late?" he asked that morning, discussing the verses of Catullus.
Kael sat in the third row,
writing carefully in his black leather journal.
He looked the same as always focused, unaware that just a few seats behind him, Aerish was transcribing the rhythm of his breath rather than the lecture's content.
Amid Halden's discourse on Latin poetry, she slipped in a line of her own:
Sometimes, love is born from a loss we never realized we carried.
Sera sat beside Kael, laughing softly when the professor quipped that Othello was "a love story that celebrated its own ruin." Her hand brushed Kael's arm now and then gentle, without ulterior motive.
Aerish never resented Sera. Strangely, she loved the girl's sincerity the way one loves a morning sky they could never touch.
I choose to be drenched in the storm, even when the sun offers its warmth.
After class, as always, Aerish headed to the literature faculty's reading room a silent space beneath a glass ceiling,where time seemed to slow.
Other students chatted in corners, debating Shelley or Plath.
But Aerish always sat alone.
That morning,she reread Dylan Thomas, jotting lingering phrases in the margins.
"Do not go gentle into that good night."She wondered silently,for whom did I save that line?
Liora was waiting outside the hall with two cups of hot cocoa from the canteen.
Her presence always felt like spring lost in autumn warm, slightly messy."You still haven't talked to him?"she asked quietly, handing one of the cups over.
Aerish only smiled."What words could ever build a bridge from a forgotten past?"
"Sometimes,"Liora murmured, gazing at the sky, "you don't need a bridge.
Just a song overheard by accident."
Literature students lived in rhythms of quiet reading and writing in silence.
Their assignments weren't typical essays, but reflections on verses that often made little sense to outsiders.
Some afternoons,they joined open discussions in the garden "Twilight and Sonnets"hosted by Eliah Rowan.
Aerish rarely spoke there.
She simply listened as others dissected love and sorrow through verse.
Between lectures, Aerish would often retreat to The Quill & Rain, a small café that felt like a sanctuary for her spirit. Its walls were filled with quotes from unknown poets. Eliah, always calm behind the wooden counter, greeted them with a subtle nod as he restacked worn poetry books on the shelves.
Aerish chose her usual spot by the window. She opened her notebook and began writing, her fingers trembling:
The rain still sounds the same, even in a different place.
Liora read silently from across the table. "That poem feels like… someone pretending to forget, but still wide awake inside."
"Like me?" Aerish asked, eyes lingering on the window reflecting Kael's silhouette passing across the street.
"Like all of us," Liora replied, chewing the edge of her cup.
Sometimes, Aerish attended the elective "Poetry and Trauma," taught by Professor Thorne a somber figure, but one who understood the language of wounds.
In that class, every student wrote a poem drawn from their most hidden experience. Aerish never read hers aloud. Yet once, beneath her assignment, Professor Thorne left a note:
"Not all love can be spoken, but if it's written it lasts longer than memory."
When night began to fall, Aerish returned to the Stone Library. She sat in a far corner where lamplight slipped softly between the cracks of aging shelves.
Eliah passed by without a word.
He knew within silent pages,there were truths louder than a thousand conversations.
That night, Aerish penned her final poem:
I don't need you to remember me.
I just want you to understand.
Her house was quiet when she returned.
No sound except the ticking of the old clock and the distant hush of rain beginning to fall. She slid her notebook under her pillow, as if it could shield her dreams from a world too bright.
She slept peacefully, though within her soul, words still danced.
And at the edge of the unfinished poem, she whispered a name not as a prayer, but as an echo:
Kael.
____________
Silence without melody is the softest torment yet I keep it buried in a restlessness that silently longs to scream.