The Sky That Wasn't Mine.

Preface

There are places we visit that don’t exist on maps.

They arrive in sleep  or just before it. They breathe behind walls, shimmer in reflections, and sometimes, speak through the silence of people we thought we knew. These places don’t ask for passports or logic. They unfold like riddles, stitched from memory, emotion, and echoes of moments never lived  yet deeply felt.

I call them dreams, but not the kind that vanish with daylight. These dreams linger. They whisper even after you wake up. They build corridors inside you and return at the most unexpected times  like old songs on rainy evenings, or strangers with familiar eyes.

This collection was born from such dreams.

Not as stories, at first  but as feelings too stubborn to leave. Some arrived in fragments: a staircase spiraling out of a wall, a silent man holding my hand, a war fought in a room that no longer felt mine. Others came whole, already narrating themselves, as if I were just a scribe.

What lies ahead are not tales in the traditional sense. They are oneirofractures  glimpses of the mind when it's most vulnerable, most honest, and most unafraid to blend fear with beauty. These are dreamworlds where time folds, identity melts, and reality watches from the shore.

In writing them, I did not seek answers.

Only to listen.

If you, too, have ever woken up with a question in your chest or a feeling that did not belong to your waking life — then maybe, just maybe, these pages were meant to find you.

— Shrishti Kumari

"The sky that wasn't mine  "captures the emotional dissonance and haunting detachment in your story  the quiet ache of being present yet unanchored, of walking beside people you can't reach, under a sky that no longer belongs to you.

The Sky That Wasn't Mine

“The war came not from the world, but from the wall.”

I always believed my room was mine — enclosed, safe, sacred.

But last night, as sleep pulled me in, the wall near the corner cracked open like a mouth that had been quiet for too long.

“Sanctuaries can betray too especially the ones we build inside ourselves.”

From the fissure, a staircase spiraled upward, stone by stone, unreal yet solid.

Men began descending  not with rage, but with calm urgency.

They didn’t look at me like I was someone separate.

They said, “Get ready. The war is near.”

“Some warnings don’t echo; they arrive already breathing.”

The room twisted on itself like a Rubik’s cube 

walls shimmered into palace columns,

my modest table morphed into mahogany,

and a chandelier breathed to life.

It wasn’t my room anymore. It was a war chamber.

I didn’t hesitate.

I fought. With a team I didn’t recognize — faceless, nameless, but loyal.

We won.

I tasted victory not in triumph, but in sweat.

 “Not all victories scream. Some simply exhale.”

But then, they came again.

And this time, the palace didn’t return.

My room remained a room.

And I was scared.

I didn’t fight.

I hid behind the table the one that once held my books and dreams.

I became smaller, quieter.

 “The same place that saw you rise can also witness your retreat.”

I remember thinking:

“Why can I not fight again?”

And then, as if cued by a breath I didn’t take 

I was no longer there.

I was on a beach.

The sand clung to my toes.

I was surrounded by friends, laughter, plates of food.

A celebrity I admire hazy now, like his face didn’t want to stay in my memory — sat among us, drunk and distant.

“Familiarity fades fast in places not meant to last.”

I told him gently, “Let me drop you home.”

He nodded.

We walked out of a luxury hotel that backed into the ocean.

But as we stepped onto the city road, I remembered I came here with someone else.

He was beside me, holding my hand — but didn’t speak.

I couldn’t read him. I couldn’t even hear his breath.

“Some silences are louder than betrayal.”

I asked, “Where is your house?”

But he gave no answer.

We walked through a thousand roads

dusty lanes, gleaming flyovers, old alleys with no names.

The night thickened.

I was tired.

“I don’t know where we’re going,” I said. “Can you go alone from here?”

Just then, I saw him  a teacher from long ago.

He stood under a flickering lamp like he was made of patience.

 “Sometimes, the past appears not to answer, but to remind.”

“Sir,” I called out, “Can I speak to you?”

He smiled, but not fully.

“I have guests now. Come to my office later.”

I wanted to tell him 

I’m starting something. A dream, stitched in silence.

Will you be part of it?

But I didn’t.

My voice stayed locked behind my ribs.

“The heaviest words are the ones never spoken.”

Then I searched for an auto to go home.

Suddenly, the celebrity stood beside me again.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

He told the driver his address like it had always been easy.

The auto drove off, trailing dust and answers.

And I stood there

empty-handed, unanswered, under a sky that no longer felt like mine.

Sometimes, the battlefield isn’t the fight.

Sometimes, it’s the silence afterward.

Sometimes, the enemy is not the attacker 

but the one who walks beside you and never tells you where they’re going.

Thankyou