BY NIHA KARJIKAR,
Eva didn't speak. Not because she didn't want to, but because the world has stolen her voice when she was seven, an accident. the doctors has said. But
silence wasn't emptiness for her. It was her canvas. She painted with her eyes, spoke through her fingertips, and found poetry in every little corners of the world others were too loud to notice. she spent her days moving like a secrets, quite halls, shadowed benches, art room that smelled of old books and unfinished dreams. Her sketchbook was her diary, her confessions. Each pages held something she could never say aloud.
Noah, on the other hand, was noise wrapped in charm. He played guitar in the college band, quoted poetry without warning, and argued with professors just to feel alive. People admired him for his brilliance and his fire. But beneath that blaze was an aching boy who never forgave his father for disappearing without a word. Noah hated silence. It reminded him of closed doors and unread letters.
They couldn't have been more different. And yet, fate introduced them on a late autumn afternoon in the campus library.
Noah had been flipping through poetry books, frustrated. he needed words for a script he couldn't finished. Eva was sketching, tucked between shelves. She didn't notice him until his book slipped from his hand and thudded beside her. Startled, their eyes met. He mumbled an apology. She only smiled and picked up his book.
From that day on, he started coming to library earlier. Because he knew something in the way she looked at him, like she could see through his mess and noise, made him stay. He just sit nearby. Just to watch her draw. She never spoke, but she began leaving little papers scraps on the table, sketched metaphors of how his soul felt.
A boy catch in paper boat during a storm.
A bird with inked wings.
A cup half full of stars.
The next day, he came back. And the next. He never spoke much. Just sat at the table near hers, sometimes pretending to read. She never asked him to leave. That was enough. He never asked for her name. he didn't need to. She was the language he never knew he needed to learn. One rainy afternoon, he finally broke the silence. "Do you believe love needs words ?." She looked at him for a long moment, then drew a picture. Two hands, reaching, not touching. One had heart blooming from the pain. The other had thorns. But in between, in the white spaces, was peace. He didn't fully understand, but his chest hurt in the most beautiful way. Something about her silence comforted the loudest parts of him. And something about his chaos brought color to her calm. He asked her to meet him on the bridge behind the art building that weekend.
She stood there next day, umbrella tucked under her arms, dressed in a pale blue dress that fluttered like a whisper. The world around them was grey, gentle, quiet. HE was already waiting, holding a sketchbook. Every paper scrap she had left behind. "You've been speaking to me all along," he said. "And I finally listened." She stepped forward, cupped his cheeks. no words. Just a moment of quiet breath. Eyes locked. souls listening. Then she kissed him. softly, like her silence. And in that single kiss, Noah heard the loudest thing he'd ever known: love that didn't need a voice to echo. Because in that moment, her silence was louder than any songs he had written. Love, he realized, wasn't made of declarations. It was two souls standing still in the world that never stopped.
And one day, behind the old college rooftop, brushing the world in hues of gold and hush. Eva and Noah sat side by side on narrow bench that overlooked that quiet campus garden. She had her legs tucked under her, and he was holding her hand, their fingers interlaced like ivy, slow, natural, inevitable. They weren't talking. They never needed to. A gentle breeze stirred the strands of hair near her ear, and she closed her eyes. It was soft, like most of their moments, filled with things unsaid but deeply felt.
Then, without warning, Eva reached into her pocket and pulled out a small notepad. She scribbled something with the old charcoal pencil she always carried. Noah waited patiently as she tore the page and handed it to him. Her handwriting was small, hesitant. "What if one day you stop loving me...and my silence ?." He blinked slowly, like the question had sliced through the peaceful air between them.
She didn't looked at him. Her eyes were fixed on the sky, her fingers trembling just slightly. It was kind of question someone ask when they've known loss before, When they've been left behind without reason, without warning, without closure. Noah gently placed the paper on the bench beside them. Then he turned to her fully. "Eva," he whispered, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear, "Your silence is the first thing I ever truly listened to." She still didn't look at him. Her chest rose and fell, quietly bracing for the answer she feared.
"Silence isn't empty when it comes from someone you love. Its the space where meaning rests. Where soul breathe." She looked at him now, eyes glassy, vulnerable in a way that made her seem both like a child and a galaxy. A tear slipped down from her cheeks, and he kissed it away, not to hush her sadness, but to honor it. "I love you because of it. Because in a world full of noise, you taught me that the purest feelings never shout. They stays."
Eva pulled out her sketchbook and began to draw. When she was done, she turned it towards him. A heart, small and fragile, was growing wildflowers inside of it. Beneath it, she had written: "Then I'll keep being your silence, if you promise to keep being my echo." He smiled, aching, full, whole. And in that golden hush, they sat. Two quiet souls in a world too loud.
Years later, when people asked Noah how they fell in love, hoe a boy who lived in noises and a girl who lived in silence ever found their way, he only smiled and answered: "she taught me that words are just one language. But love...love has many. And the loudest one doesn't need to be spoken"
"THE ART OF SILENT LOVE IS NOT IN THE ABSENCE OF WORDS. IT'S IN THE PRESENCE OF FEELINGS. OF KNOWING SOMEONE BY HEART, NOT BY SOUND. AND EVA, WITH HER QUIET EYES, HAD TAUGHT NOAH THE MOST ETERNAL LANGUAGE OF ALL."
React
