Today is the last free day for The Gift in the Hills, and I’ve been watching the numbers rise quietly — thirty downloads, then a few more.
I keep thinking about what that means. Not “sales” or “reach,” but the fact that thirty strangers somewhere in the world chose to open a story that came from my silence.
When I wrote The Gift in the Hills, I wasn’t trying to write a love story. I was trying to write a moment — the one where loneliness finally meets tenderness and doesn’t know what to do with it.
It’s strange how hard it is to accept what we’ve longed for. That’s what this story became for me: a quiet experiment in courage.
If you’d like to read it, it’s still free till midnight. After that, it returns to its ordinary life on Kindle.
Thank you to everyone who downloaded, shared, or just stopped by. You made the beginning feel real.
She had lived in the house for twenty years, but last night, she discovered a door she had never seen before.
It shouldn’t have been there.
The wood was older than the house itself, its surface worn, its handle cold to the touch. A relic from a time she didn’t remember.
She hesitated, then pushed it open. The door groaned—a sigh of something long-forgotten waking up.
Inside, the room smelled of dust and damp earth. In the dim light, she saw small figures curled up on beds of discarded paper and broken quills. Their faces were smudged with ink, their eyes hollow, their breaths shallow.
She shivered. “Who… are you?”
One of the girls sat up, her voice quiet but achingly familiar.
“We are the stories you left behind.”
The others stirred, their whispers like rustling pages.
“We are the ideas you ignored, the possibilities you abandoned, the words you were too busy to write.”
She felt her knees go weak.
The girl reached for her hand, her fingers ice-cold, yet pulsing with something alive.
“Will you leave us again?”
The door behind her creaked, as if waiting for her answer.
Sherry exhaled, looking up from the page. “That story… it felt real.”
Arin, sitting across from her, smiled knowingly. “Maybe because it is.”
“You mean we really do leave stories behind when we ignore them?”
“Haven’t you felt them?” Arin leaned closer. “The ideas tugging at your mind before sleep, the whispers of inspiration when you’re too busy to write them down? The abandoned stories don’t vanish, Sherry. They wait.”
She shivered, her fingers tightening around her notebook. “So… what happens if I don’t return to them?”
“The same thing that happens when you ignore any calling.” Arin’s voice softened. “They fade.”
She looked down at the story again, the words alive beneath her fingertips. “Not this time.”
‘Mamma,’ said Soniya, ‘why does Dadi say that children who tell lies will burn in hell? Where is hell? She says those who listen to their parents will go to heaven. Where is heaven? Is it in the sky? Dadi says hell is in the pit of the earth and it is always burning!
Her mother smiled and hugged her as they lay on the bed. ‘Darling, heaven and hell are not in the sky or the pit of the earth. They are in our hearts.’
Soniya sat up. ‘ In our hearts? How?’ Dadi says Papa went to heaven when he died fighting in the war. So how did he go to heaven?’
Her mother embraced her and said, ‘Papa died doing the right thing. He knew he was doing his duty and defending his country’s honour. His heart was happy because when you do the right thing, you feel happy. Heaven or hell are not places. They are the feelings we get when we do something right or wrong. When you tell a lie, your heart is not happy and you feel bad. That is hell. You keep feeling scared of what will happen next. You cannot enjoy anything because your heart doesn’t forget the lie. You keep thinking of bad things. When you tell the truth, your heart is happy and you don’t have to worry about anything.That’s heaven.’
‘Ah, now I understand. Heaven is the good feeling. Hell is the bad feeling,’ said Soniya.
‘Yes darling. Do the right thing. Tell the truth and you will have heaven in your heart always,’ said her mother.
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