3. The Sky Between Us
by Arif Rehman Khan
Fan Voting Begins tomorrow, January 6th.
[this is the third in a three part series.
read The Sky Between Us from the beginning.]
3. The Sky Between Us
I returned to the town after twenty years abroad. The old square had changed—coffee kiosks, neon signs, tourists taking selfies where our childhood ghosts once played. But the sky… the sky was the same.
The night I arrived, a storm was coming. Lightning branched like veins across the horizon. I found the excavation site where they’d unearthed the remnants of the chair. It sat now in a glass case, its arms broken, its seat engraved with names I did not remember.
As I stood there, the wind picked up—carrying dust, prayer, and laughter. And then I saw them: silhouettes gathering around the case. Old faces, familiar smiles, and those I thought I’d lost.
Someone whispered, “Spin it.”
Without thinking, I touched the glass. It trembled, then cracked—not violently, but like ice thawing in sunlight. The chair within began to turn, impossibly whole again. The storm paused; raindrops hung in the air like suspended pearls.
And for a moment, I felt everything—the grief of the craftsman who built it, the wonder of the children who found it, the hope of a town that refused to forget.
When it stopped, the glass was intact once more. But the sky had changed. The stars formed a circle, glowing faintly like a heartbeat.
Now, when I close my eyes, I see them spinning still—a constellation shaped like a chair, like an embrace. The sky between us no longer divides. It connects.
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