Pocket Storytime

  She was roused by the soft rapping at the door, the kind which did not ask—but begged—to be admitted. She was expecting the reply to her inquiry from the Almighty. As she opened the door, there was a small envelope on the ground—it had no name on it, just a symbol she had only encountered in her dreams. She opened it carefully with full enthusiasm and found it was a letter with no name on it, just "Dear Thara." Her fingers trembled as she read the first sentence: "The answers you seek are closer than you think, but first—you must remember what you chose to forget." She smiled, saying, “Yes.” She got up and went to her mirror, fetched the little drawer beneath it, and took out an old rusty key—one she had kept hidden along with the past. She grabbed the key for a nearby river, the one whose hidden opening was way down beneath. He stood on the riverbank and the water appeared to glitter abnormally, revealing a small opening where stone staircases des...

  Aarohi had always been the girl who arrived late. Late to speak. Late to walk. Late to be heard. She was not slow―just different. At school, when others gathered friends and gold medals, tales in the margin of note-books were all that reassured her. When all drove ahead in affairs of loving, working, and children, Aarohi quietly waited at the far end of life's long queue, clutching on to such tenuous dreams which could not be confided. Her twenties passed in a blur of rejection—job interviews ended in polite refusals, stories published unread as far as page five, and a broken heart when the only man she ever loved married another. Others called her unlucky. Lazy. “Too sensitive.” She smiled the whole way. But on some nights, the quite hollered. She was still living in her parent's home at thirty-five, worked on a part-time schedule in a library, and refined novels for writers whose style was all that she was interested in writing. But she refused to give up. She sat...