The White One: A Poetic Fable - Part 2

If you haven’t yet read part one of this poetic fable by KG Sharma, I would insist that you visit here and experience this tender tale of innocence. The second part, now available, is equally moving and evocative. Please do read—it promises to touch your heart!

A Whisper That Remains: A Poetic Fable - Part 2

Krishan Gopal Sharma

Echoes of the River

They still came to the river.
Not every morning — not with mango peels or laughter —
but with something quieter, like memory learning to walk again.

The boy was taller now, his shoulders carrying more than a satchel.
The girl’s hair was longer, braided with patience.
They didn’t run; they walked, barefoot,
as if the earth beneath them remembered what their voices had once meant.

The river shimmered as it always had,
but the air around it had grown older —
like a breath held too long.

They didn’t speak of him often,
but he was there — in the pause before they sat down,
in the way they watched the forest’s edge without reason.

Some said the white calf had drowned.
Others said he had turned to mist.
A few whispered he had become a spirit —
watching, waiting, forgiving.

But the children — now almost grown —
knew better. Some souls don’t vanish.
They simply change their rhythm.

The village had grown too:
machines, noise, a temple with loudspeakers that outshouted the wind.
Cow worship had become a festival — televised, painted, sold.
Men smeared vermillion and shouted devotion,
then argued over the price of milk.

“They chant louder now,” the girl said once,
“but they listen less.”

One evening, just before the monsoon broke,
the girl saw something drift along the river —
a white feather, rising against the current.
Not from a bird, not from the sky —
from somewhere quieter.

She didn’t speak. She only followed.
The boy came too. No questions, only footsteps.

They passed the temple and its noise,
the field where the bull had once stood,
and entered the forest.

The forest met them with silence —
not emptiness, but welcome.
The kind of silence that holds a heartbeat beneath its breath.

They saw hoofprints — delicate, deliberate.
A tree with bark peeled in the shape of a crescent moon.
A fox paused in the distance, its eyes full of recognition rather than hunger.

And then they saw him.
A white bull, standing in a clearing washed in twilight.
Taller now, broader, his coat glimmering like mist on stone.

His eyes carried seasons, but no bitterness.
He didn’t bow. He didn’t flee.
He simply looked at them,
and in that stillness, years folded away.

The girl took a step forward, hand trembling.
The boy whispered, “Is it him?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
Because some souls return not to be found —
but to remind.

They sat beside him until the stars came.
No words, no movement — only breathing,
the sound of night learning to listen.

When they rose, he turned his gaze toward the river —
not to follow, not to leave — simply to bless.

They understood.

He belonged now to the silence,
to the rhythm of things untouched by greed.

Back in the village, they spoke of him to no one.
Instead, they wrote stories, taught children,
planted trees where noise had once lived.

And sometimes, when the wind wandered through the fields,
a white shape shimmered at the forest’s edge —
not a ghost, not a god,
just a whisper,
just The White One.
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For Part 3, click here...

Krishan Gopal Sharma; kgsharma1@gmail.com; Freelance journalist, retired from Indian Information Services. Former senior editor with DD News, AIR News, and PIB. Consultant with UNICEF Nigeria. Covered BRICS, ASEAN, Metropolis summits and contributed to national and international media.