Distance Between Our Little Fingers

In the old photographs, they are always beside each other.

At harvest festivals and family weddings. Covered in mud near the canal behind the estates. Sitting beneath dining tables while the adults talk business overhead. One dark-eyed and restless, the other watching him like he already knew something no one else did.

The Rathores and Mehtas have shared land, loyalty, and history for generations. Their homes stand close enough that the distance between them was never measured in miles. So Ravendar Reeti Rathore and Swapnil Mehta grow up as all such children do-half brothers, half rivals, entirely inseparable.

Then they grow older.

And somewhere between boyhood and becoming men, something shifts quietly beneath the surface of their lives. A glance held too long. A touch neither forgets. A silence that arrives suddenly and never fully leaves again.

Years pass in the way they always do. The world widens. Responsibilities settle. Families begin expecting things from them. Ravendar becomes someone people stand for when he enters a room. Swapnil learns how to laugh through almost anything.

Still, some habits remain.

Swapnil is the only person who still calls him Revi.

And Ravendar, despite everything he has inherited, never learns how to let him go.