A small village located between hills that rolled off into the distance, surrounded by fields that stretched on forever in lavender hues, had changed much over the years. But never once had it let its secrets loose. Strangers came through, but there was something which few knew about, fewer believed, and hardly anyone talked about.

There was an old stone house at the center of the village. It had been filled with laughter once, where a young couple, Thomas and Clara, had lived. They had loved so much, but life had other plans. The war arrived and took Thomas. Clara never heard from him again. She carried her grief as an additional skin and used to go for midnight walks in the fields, hoping to spot him on the far horizon, but she knew it was pointless.

Years passed. The fields of lavender came and went, children grew and became men and women, and the village continued on its predictable course. Yet Clara still lugged the fields every day, under her arm a sheaf of letters held together by a ribbon that had worn out long ago. They were letters to Thomas, letters written by her over the years—letters never sent. She wrote the sunrises, the skies, the memories they had made. The letters were the hidden passion of her life.

One afternoon, Clara was walking along the way beside the bough of the ancient oak on the edge of the village and saw something odd. A small leather-bound notebook had been set beside the base of the tree, half-covered in soil. It was a notebook, the pages yellow with age but otherwise legible. Clara sat on the ground, shivering, and began to read.

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It was Thomas'.

It described the life that he had lived after the war—a life he never did with her. He had had to leave her behind and had gone away thinking he would never again lay eyes on her and had started anew half a world away. But in letters over the years, he wrote of the crushing weight of guilt that he carried, of his love that he never lost for Clara, and of hope that one day fate would reunite them.

Stirred tears in Clara's eyes as she read the final entry, the day that he died in a small town not far from where they were.

He never stopped loving her. He never stopped writing letters to her in his head.

As the sun had dipped below the horizon that evening, Clara laid the journal at the base of the oak tree where she had found it. She could hear Thomas' whisper, exhaled on the wind through the leaves. And Clara felt calm for the first time in decades.

The village, which had been so defined by loss, now had a new memory. A silent love story, never spoken but never forgotten.