The White One: A Poetic Fable - Part 3

This tender poetic fable is the third in the series. In case, you missed the earlier two parts, you can click here and here.

 The White One: A Poetic Fable - Part 3

Krishan Gopal Sharma

The Reunion Beyond Words

They hadn’t spoken of him in years.
Not because they had forgotten,
but because some memories grow too sacred for speech.

The boy and the girl — now man and woman —
had carried the White One quietly inside them,
like a lamp kept lit behind the ribs.

She wrote stories that made children pause before they cried.
He taught kindness without ever naming it.
And sometimes, when twilight gathered like old music,
they felt him — not as a ghost, not as a god,
but as presence.

Some bonds do not fade.
They simply learn to wait in quieter places.
One winter evening, they walked deeper into the forest than ever before.

No reason, no map — only a pull,
the same pull that once led them to laughter, to loss, to the river.
The trees were older here.
Their roots knotted like memories holding one another.
The air was colder, yet tender,
as if the forest itself remembered who they were.

Birds moved softly through the branches —
not singing, only stirring.
And then, in a clearing where the last light pooled,
they saw him.
The White One.
Older, broader, more earth than mist now.
But still radiant in the way truth is — quietly, without need.

His eyes met theirs,
and the distance of years fell away like a shadow that had outlived its sun.
The woman’s breath caught.
The man forgot to move.
Then the tears came — unashamed, gentle as rain returning to its river.

He stepped toward them —
slowly, surely — until his breath brushed their faces.
He nuzzled her hand,
pressed his forehead against the man’s chest,
and for a heartbeat, time forgot itself.

They embraced him —
not as one embraces a creature,
but as souls recognizing the shape of what they had once lost.
They sat together until the first stars appeared.

They spoke nothing.
Words would have broken what silence was mending.
He lay beside them,
his warmth steady against the cold earth.
They listened to the rhythm of his breathing —
it sounded like forgiveness.

They wanted to take him home,
to show the world that innocence had survived.
But they didn’t.
Because they knew what waited beyond the trees —
noise, rituals, masks of love.
They looked into his eyes.
He looked into theirs.
And understanding passed between them — clear, wordless, whole.

Some love is too sacred to cage.
Some innocence too fragile to parade.
When they rose, the forest was breathing with them.
The White One watched as they walked away —
not with sorrow, but with peace.

He would stay,
among the roots and the river’s hum,
where silence lives without fear of forgetting.
They returned to the village slowly —
not burdened, not broken,
but gentled by what they had found.
Behind them, The White One stood still —
watching, remembering, safe.
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Epilogue — Where the Wind Remembers

Back in the village, they told no one.
Some truths are too delicate to survive retelling.
She wrote of a forest where silence breathes like a living thing.
He taught that love does not always speak — it listens.

They didn’t argue over gods anymore.
They listened to the wind.
Sometimes, when the evening air turned silver,
they would return to that clearing.

The path was never lost to them —
it simply waited, like the heart waits for forgiveness.
And there he would be —
The White One — standing where the forest opened to the sky,
his coat gleaming faintly,
his eyes calm with the patience of everything that endures.
He did not need to come closer.

They would stand there in silence —
three beings who had learned that love and faith
are not found in temples or chants,
but in the simple grace of not harming, not taking, not pretending.
When they left, the forest folded around them again,
keeping their secret as gently as it keeps its roots.

Some say he walked into the river.
Some say he waits.
But the children still search,
and maybe — so do we.
Perhaps innocence never dies.
It only learns to live in quieter places.
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Afterword
The Unfolding Dawn
There are journeys that do not end — they only grow quiet for a while.
The words may pause here, yet the silence between them keeps moving, seeking new forms, new voices, new dawns.

Perhaps what was written is only an echo of what remains unwritten — the spaces we still walk through, the questions we still cradle.
And if a longing stirs within, let it stay…
for it is the sign that something living has touched something eternal —
and still wishes to return.
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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.