P.s: This story is a continuation of Highway 23. From Rafiq's POV, the story moves to Meera's POV

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I had stopped speaking for over a month, but no one noticed.

The screams from that night when he beat me black and blue echoed louder now than ever. Five months pregnant, with a child growing inside and fear wrapped around my ribs, I couldn’t think of anything to do but stay.

Until something shifted, small but sharp enough to stir me from the floor. I lifted my bruised body, and guided my way towards the door.

I didn’t look back. There was nothing to look back to.

I hadn’t expected to see Rafiq on Highway 23 that led me to the women’s shelter. For a moment, my resolve cracked. Part of me wanted to reach for him, to hold on and never let go. Fleetingly, it felt like a second chance, like the life I had once imagined, years ago, when we were just two young souls holding hands and dreaming of togetherness.

He didn’t ask questions. And just like before, I slid away from his life. My steps took me away from him again. What would he do with splintered fragments of my soul anyway?

The staff at the women’s shelter thought my silence was shocking. The other women guessed trauma, something violent. I let them think what they wanted. I took my meals without complaint. Did my chores. Stopped counting days. 

I sat in the courtyard every morning beneath the broken skylight. 

My life passed in sky colours of ash grey, muted gold, a bruised purple at dusk. Each hue was a quiet reminder that I was still here. That patch of sky became my ritual.

One morning, a new girl arrived. Loud, restless, chatty. She sat beside me without asking.

“I’m Rehana,” she said. “You don’t talk?”

I shook my head.

“That’s okay. I talk enough. I’ll make up for us both.”

Rehana kept talking. About how she fell in love with another girl, about her brother who told her to rot, about the freedom of walking away and the fear of what came next.

I didn’t speak, but listened. And Rehana didn’t fill the silence with pity. She let it exist.

One day, as birds circled above and wind shifted through the courtyard, I finally said, “I was nine the first time I saw a roof open.”

Rehana turned, startled by my voice that was hoarse from months of silence.

“It was during a sand storm. The tin peeled off like paper. I was scared, but then… the dust settled and I saw the sky. Just like this.” I pointed upward. Rehana followed my gaze.

“I didn’t want them to fix it,” I said. “I wanted the sky to stay with me.”

Rehana walked in and returned with a piece of chalk. She knelt and drew a large square on the floor.

“What’s that?” I was amused.

“A room with no roof,” Rehana said.

They both smiled, just a little.

The next morning, the staff found them sitting inside the chalk square. Drinking tea and talking.

Above them, the sky remained open.