It has been a whole day since they returned from the city, and Vidhya had nearly exhausted Madhavi with the same questions she had been asking since their arrival. She wanted to know everything—the sea, the sky, the stars, the city, even the smallest details Madhavi could remember. By now, Madhavi had repeated the same story so many times that she could probably have told it with her eyes closed.

She had explained again and again how far the sea stretched, so vast that she couldn't see where the water ended and the land began. She had tried to describe how the horizon seemed to disappear into the distance, leaving nothing but water as far as her eyes could reach. Then came the sky, which had appeared so endless that, at one point, it seemed to melt into the sea itself, as though the two had become one. And no matter how many times Vidhya asked about the stars, Madhavi still found herself smiling while describing them—the tiny points of light scattered across the darkness, resembling countless fairy lights hung high above the world.