By Pragalya.

The email came from her own address.

Subject: This is how it was supposed to be.

Mouna stared at the screen, the cursor blinking in soft defiance

There was no attachments.just a single line in the body:

Write it exactly as you remember it.Then we can go back.

She read it three times, checked the headers, the timestamp. Nothing about it made sense. She lived alone. She didn't schedule emails to herself. She didn't even use that inbox anymore.

But still-something about the message pressed into her like a hand she half-recognized.

She left her desk, made coffee she didn't drink, stood in the kitchen while the rain painted tiny shadows on the window. Her reflection in the glass looked tired. Dim.

That morning, she'd woken from a dream of laughter. A child's laughter. A boy she didn't know. Or didn't remember.

She'd chalked it up to stress. The deadline. The insomnia. The quiet ache that had become a kind of second skin. But now, that ache felt specific. As if it had a name.

The novel she'd been working on had been shapeless for weeks. A foggy concept about memory and second chances. She had a protagonist, Nidhi, a woman recovering from coma. The story opened with her return to an ordinary life-except nothing about it felt wrong color.

And the most impossible part: her husband was gone. Her son never existed

Everyone told her she was imagining things. That the brain fills in gaps. That trauma rewrites memory. But Nidhi remembered. She knew.

Mouna didn't know where the idea had come from.but now it felt less like an idea and more like a memory one buried, flickering just behind her eyes.

She Opened the draft.startes at the blinking cursor.

Then, as if pulled by invisible thread, she began to write.

Each new scene emerged like déjà vu.

She didn't plan the details the arrived, fully formed: the chipped porcelain mug Nidhi couldn't bear to throw out, the hummingbird necklace she never took off, the name of the man she remembered loving-Varun.

It was name that made mouna flinch the first time she typed it.

That night, she dreamed of hands cupping her face. A low voice murmuring, "You always forget".

She woke up crying, though she didn't know why. Her pillow was damp. Her chest ached with a grief that didn't belong to this life.

By chapter 10, Nidhi was unraveling.

She began finding fragments of her old life hidden in strange places a photograph of a child she couldn't name, a crayon drawing with the
word mama scrawled in uneven letters. Her new world insisted none of it was real.

But she felt him. Heard his voice sometimes in the sound of wind.

Mouna's own life began slipping at the edges.

Her mirror cracked not shattered, but a silver line splitting down the centre. At first she thought it was the humidity. The walls settling. But over the next few days, she noticed something stranger.

Her reflection sometimes moved...not quite in sync.

One night, it blinked after she did. Another, it titled it's head when hers remained still. And one-just once-ir smiled softly. Like it was proud of her.

She tried to walk away from the manuscript.

She closed the file. Avoided her desk. Took long walks through her neighborhood with no music,no phone. But still, the world tugged at her.

She passed a park one morning and saw a boy on a swing. His face struck ker a match-freckles,dark curls,wide eyes.

Her heart stuttered. She nearly called out.

But his mother-someone else called his name. Ilan.

Mouna staggered backward, breath gone

That was the name.

She had written it days earlier. Nidhi's child. The one no one believed had ever existed.

The final email arrived on a Sunday.

No subject. No sender.

Just a single Sentence:

You weren't writing a novel, Mouna. You were remembering it.

That night,she sat at her desk.lit a candle,and opened the manuscript.

The final chapter had already begun.

Nidhi walks towards the white garden gate. The one she's seen in her dreams. The one that never stays close.

Beyond it, Varun waits. Ilan runs ahead of him, barefoot, laughing. The wind stirs the trees. The violin plays again soft, sorrowful, joyful.

Nidhi steps through. She remembers.

The love. The loss. The choice.

She had come back to find them. And now, She was home.

Mouna stared at the screen. Her fingers hovered above the keys.

Outside, thunder rolled low in the distance.

Inside. The lights flickered.

The mirror split further down the centre but this time, it didn't stop at the frame.

Her reflection stepped back.

And Mouna leaned forward.

She was never seen again.

Her landlord found the apartment empty. No sighs of struggle. No forwarding address. The manuscript had vanished from her laptop. Even the draft folder was erased.

But something remained: a printed copy of the story, left on the desk, bound in plain black cardstock.

Inside, No title page. No name.

Just the final line, hand written in blue ink:

She remembered every thing. And so, she went home.