To Iris

[u/Available_Bad9872]

When the boy first arrived,
the village felt too quiet for someone so small.

It was a cold place —
not cruel, just distant.
The kind of cold that settled into your sleeves
and made you speak less.

He had moved there suddenly.
New house. New roads.
New skies that looked the same
but didn’t feel like his.

So he kept to himself.

He watched other children from windows.
Learned the rhythm of the wind.
Let the days pass without leaving footprints.

Until one afternoon,
while wandering farther than usual,
he found a girl sitting by a tree
at the edge of the village.

She wasn’t doing anything remarkable.

Just tracing circles in the frost
with the tip of her shoe.

She looked up.
He looked down.

Neither of them smiled.

That was how it began.

They started meeting there every day —
two quiet children
sharing the kind of silence
that doesn’t feel empty.

They spoke in small pieces at first.

Favorite sweets.
Which clouds looked like ships.
Which houses had dogs that barked too much.

The boy learned that she hated loud places.
She learned that he didn’t like goodbyes.

It wasn’t dramatic.
It wasn’t loud.

It was steady.

The tree became their place.

They sat against its trunk,
shoulder to shoulder,
watching the light fade from silver to blue.

Sometimes she would bring wrapped candies.
Sometimes he would bring warm pastries
hidden in his coat pockets.

They would argue about nothing
and laugh at everything.

When the first snow came,
they wrote their names in it.

One day, after months of this,
she told him her real name.

They had called each other silly nicknames before —
half-jokes that stuck.

But that day, she grew serious.

“My name is Iris.”

She said it carefully,
like handing him something fragile.

He repeated it.

“Iris.”

The word felt right in his mouth.

She blinked.

“No one has ever called me that before.”

He didn’t understand why that mattered so much,
but he could tell it did.

So from that day on,
he said it often.

“Morning, Iris.”
“Wait for me, Iris.”
“Don’t forget the sweets, Iris.”

And every time,
she smiled like the frost had thinned.

Seasons changed.

They made promises the way children do —
with complete belief.

“Forever,” she said once,
pressing her pinky against his.

“Forever,” he agreed,
without asking what it meant.

Winter arrived heavier that year.

The air grew sharper.
Their breaths turned visible.

“It’s getting cold,” she would say,
cupping her hands together.

So the boy brought her hot sweets every day.

Sticky, warm things wrapped in paper.
Steam curling between them
as they unwrapped the sugar carefully.

He liked watching her hands warm up around them.

He liked being the one who brought warmth.

They sat closer as the frost thickened.
Laughed softer.
Stayed longer.

The village felt smaller,
but their corner of it felt infinite.

Until one morning,
she wasn’t there.

He waited.

The sweets stayed warm in his coat
longer than usual.

He told himself she was late.

He came back the next day.

And the next.

Snow gathered at the base of the tree.
His footprints overlapped
until the ground forgot which were new.

Days turned to weeks.

The frost did not answer him.

There were no notes.
No explanations.
No footsteps beside his.

Only absence.

Years passed.

The boy grew taller.
His voice grew deeper.
The village shrank in memory.

One winter, older now,
he returned.

He walked the path he once knew by heart.

But something was wrong.

The road bent differently.
The fences ended sooner.

When he asked about the far side of the village,
the elders frowned.

“That side?” they said.
“No one’s been there in hundreds of years.”

“It’s been closed off.
Unsafe. Forgotten.”

He laughed at first.

That couldn’t be right.

He knew the tree.
He knew the snow.
He knew the place where two sets of footprints
once lived side by side.

He pushed past the barrier.

And there it was.

The tree.

Older. Taller.
Bark worn with time.

He stepped closer.

His hands trembled —
not from the cold.

And carved into the trunk,
faded but unmistakable:

“I’m sorry.”

The wind moved through the branches.

The frost settled around his shoes.

And for a long moment,
the boy stood there —
between memory and winter —
staring at the only proof
that she had ever been real.

[u/Available_Bad9872]

Note* I took inspiration from an online friendship of mine with a person named well lets not name her.. but yeah..
i just wrote it in a form of a story rather than discord chats

Lol
Hope yall like it