Lina was eight when she first met Mary when she was on a trip to London with her parents. They played together for the day in the park and became so close they agreed to be pen pals. Mary had curly hair and a curious handwriting. At first, their letters were simple—favourite colours, pets, silly doodles—but soon, they grew deeper, like tiny bridges built across oceans.
Both girls felt a strange sense of closeness, as though they’d known each other forever.
One rainy evening, Lina could see a faint light behind the bookshelf in her attic. She went to the shelf and there she saw what looked like a window, though there had never been one there before. When she touched it, light beamed out, soft and golden. On instinct, she stepped through.
Mary, miles away, had found the same window in her grandmother’s basement. It too had shimmered. She stepped through without a thought.
They arrived in a hidden garden—lush, alive, and nothing like the real world. The grass shimmered like emerald, and the trees hummed lullabies. In the centre was a pond that reflected their memories.
“Are you Lina?” Mary asked, wide-eyed.
Lina smiled. “And you’re Mary.”
They laughed and ran wild in the garden. They made promises under moon-shaped flowers. “One day,” Lina said, “even if we’re far away, I hope we meet again”.
“In this garden?” Mary asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe somewhere no one expects.”
When they returned, their parents brushed it off as a dream. “You must’ve fallen asleep with your letters,” Lina’s mother said. “It’s sweet, but not real.”
Still, the letters continued, filled with drawings of their secret garden and stories they never told anyone else. But life, as it always does, picked up speed. School turned to college, and letters faded into quick texts, then silence.
Years passed.
Lina, now in her late twenties, sat in a noisy café tucked between bookshops in a street in Rome. She stirred her coffee absent mindedly, her eyes drifting around. And then—she froze.
A woman across the room was sketching flowers on a napkin—flowers shaped exactly like the ones from the garden.
The same curls. The same careful fingers.
Lina stood up slowly.
“Mary?”
The woman looked up, startled. Her eyes widened. “Lina?”
The moment stood still.
They didn’t run or scream. They just smiled like the universe had kept a quiet promise.
“I was drawing the garden,” Mary whispered. “I don’t know why. It just came back to me today.”
“I think I was meant to be here,” Lina replied, breathless.
They sat and talked for hours, not trying to explain the unexplainable. The garden, the letters, the feeling of being understood. It had all been real. Even if no one else had believed them.
And that day, in the middle of a noisy café with ordinary people all around, two girls who once shared a magical garden found each other again—not by chance, but by something greater.
Some friendships, after all, are too rare for logic. Some stories wait quietly, blooming in their own time.
By Christina K Sangma