Title: “The Bridge Between”
They met on the border.
Not the loud one with fences and guns.
But the quiet one
a forgotten path between two mountains, where the wind didn’t carry words like enemy or traitor, only the scent of pine and ancient rain.
She was from the North.
He was from the South.
The world told them they were born to hate.
But when Aylan found Mira sitting on that ledge, sketching the valley below like she was trying to draw peace into existence, he forgot the name of his country.
And she forgot why she carried pepper spray in her bag.
He offered her dried figs.
She offered him silence.
They came back the next day.
Then the next.
For months, they met there never stepping past the invisible line their grandfathers would have cursed them for approaching.
They traded stories like precious contraband.
They learned each other’s wounds
not the political ones carved by newspapers,
but the ones no border could name:
His brother lost to a bombing.
Her sister jailed for singing.
His mother’s hands that stopped trembling only when holding prayer beads.
Her father’s voice that broke every time he watched the news.
They never said love.
They didn’t have to.
One day, Mira came with a folded paper in her pocket.
She whispered, “I got us visas. A third country. No sides. Just us.”
Aylan didn’t answer at first. He just looked down at the valley, wondering if mountains could miss people.
That night, they crossed.
But the war that belonged to their countries had a longer reach than they did.
A drone saw movement.
A radio crackled.
A decision was made in a room too far away to care about love.
One bullet.
One name screamed.
One heartbeat lost.
Mira lived.
She writes letters now.
To governments.
To ghosts.
To a boy who once offered her dried figs and the first silence that didn’t feel like fear.
No one remembers how the war started anymore.
But sometimes, when the wind shifts just right between those mountains,
you can hear someone sketching the sky
Still trying to draw peace
into existence.
