Laiba had always felt a quiet kinship with snow. It wasn’t just the way it blanketed her small Kashmiri village in a hush of white, muffling the sounds of the world it was the way it swallowed everything whole. When it snowed, the streets emptied, voices softened, and people disappeared into their homes, leaving behind only the wind’s whispers and the occasional crunch of footsteps.

And that was what she loved the most. The quiet.

Laiba wasn’t like the other children in her village. While they ran through the bazaars, loud and carefree, she preferred to sit by her window, watching the snowflakes twirl like lost souls against the gray sky. She was an introvert in a world that demanded presence, a dreamer in a place where dreams were often abandoned at the doorstep of reality.

She didn’t know when she had first started writing perhaps it was the first time she had tried to explain the way snow made her feel. Words had come to her in scattered fragments, the way the snowflakes gathered on her windowsill: “Soft. Silent. Safe.”

She wrote not because she wanted to be a writer but because she had to because the words inside her heart needed a home. And snow, with all its mystery, was the perfect muse.
But the world had little patience for a girl lost in words.

A WORLD THAT DIDN'T LISTEN

School was suffocating. Laiba hated the rigid expectations, the meaningless memorization. Numbers blurred together, history felt hollow, and science was just a series of equations she was told to accept without question.

Her teachers saw her as a failure. Her classmates whispered behind her back.

“She won’t amount to anything,” they said.

Her father had little faith in her dreams, either. He wanted her to be something respectable a doctor, a teacher, something practical. “Writing won’t feed you,” he reminded her whenever he saw her scribbling in her old, worn-out diary. “The world doesn’t wait for dreamers, Laiba.”
Only her mother understood.

She was the quiet force that shielded Laiba from the weight of expectations. While others dismissed her words as childish scribbles, her mother saw them for what they were an extension of her soul.

“Keep writing,” she would whisper at night, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “One day, the world will listen.”

But as the years passed, Laiba began to doubt that.

When she failed her exams, it was as if the world had confirmed her worst fear she was worthless.

Her father stopped speaking to her for weeks. Relatives whispered about how she had “brought shame” to the family. Even her mother, though still loving, had a sadness in her eyes not disappointment, but worry.

Laiba knew what came next. Like every other girl in the village who wasn’t “successful,” marriage proposals would start arriving. They would try to mold her into a perfect wife, a perfect daughter-in-law, a perfect prisoner of a life she never wanted.

So, she did the only thing she could ...she fought.

She took up a small job at a local bookstore, organizing dusty old novels and earning just enough to scrape by. It wasn’t much, but it was freedom. It gave her time to write, even if it was just at night, curled under her thin blanket with a single candle burning beside her.

Then, one day, everything changed.

Her friend, Ayesha, found her diary.

Laiba had always been careful with it, but somehow, Ayesha had stumbled upon the pages filled with poetry, unfinished stories, and letters to the snow. Instead of laughing or dismissing them, Ayesha was shocked.

“Laiba,” she whispered, eyes wide, “this is… beautiful.”

No one had ever called her words that before.

“You need to publish this,” Ayesha insisted.

Laiba laughed bitterly. “With what money?”

But Ayesha was persistent. She introduced Laiba to a small online writing community, where she could submit her stories. At first, Laiba was hesitant ..what if they hated her work? What if they laughed at her?

But then she remembered her mother’s words.

“One day, the world will listen.”
So, she took the leap.

The Price of a DREAM

The rejections came first. Dozens of them.

Each one was a knife to her heart, but she refused to stop. She worked extra hours, saved every rupee, and finally, after what felt like a lifetime, she had enough money to self-publish her book.

She titled it “The Girl Who Spoke to Snow.”

For weeks, nothing happened. No one bought it. No one cared.

Then, one day, she received a message.

A famous author had stumbled upon her book and shared it on social media. Within days, her story spread like wildfire. Readers from across the country across the world were talking about the girl from Kashmir who had captured the beauty of winter, the ache of silence, and the weight of dreams.

Her book became a bestseller.
And suddenly, the world that had once ignored her couldn’t stop talking about her.

Finding Herself in the Storm

But success wasn’t without sacrifice.

She lost friends people who once doubted her now resented her. She faced backlash, some claimed she was exaggerating her struggles, that she was painting an “unrealistic” picture of Kashmir.

And worst of all, she nearly lost herself.

For a while, the pressure consumed her. The deadlines, the interviews, the constant noise ..it was overwhelming. She missed the days when writing was just for her, when it was just snowflakes and silence.

So, one day, she disappeared.

She packed her bags and traveled to the mountains.
There, in the quiet solitude, she remembered why she wrote.

Not for fame. Not for validation.

But because the snow still whispered to her.
Because the little girl who once sat by the window, dreaming of words, was still inside her.
And she would never stop writing.

Years later, Laiba stood in a crowded bookstore, signing copies of her latest novel.
A young girl approached her, hesitant, clutching a notebook close to her chest.

“I want to be a writer,” she whispered. “But everyone says I can’t.”

Laiba smiled, taking the girl’s hands in hers.

“Let me tell you a secret,” she said. “SNOW NEVER ASKS PERMISSION TO FALL. AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU.”