A short story that explores the connection between place, identity, and the stories carried by the natural world…
by: Fendy Satria Tulodo
The first time I realized that silence could be loud was when I was eight years old, standing knee-deep in the Brantas River. My grandfather, a man who wore stories like an old shirt, had told me that rivers speak if you listen hard enough. The water curled around my legs, tugging at me with invisible hands, and in that moment, I understood something I couldn’t yet put into words: that some things flow away, no matter how tightly you try to hold them.
I grew up in a small town near Malang, Indonesia, where the air smelled of clove cigarettes and burning wood, and the streets were alive with the distant echoes of a gamelan performance from someone’s backyard. My father was a fisherman who hated the sea, a man who cursed the waves yet still woke before dawn to chase them. My mother was quieter, her hands always busy — mending clothes, peeling fruit, braiding my sister’s hair. We lived in a house that leaned slightly to one side, like it was listening to something we couldn’t hear.
By the time I was twelve, I had memorized the sounds of the river; the way it whispered after the rain, the way it roared when it swallowed too much. My grandfather called it “suara yang tak bisa kau tulis” — the voice you cannot write. He said that some voices were meant to be carried in the body, not on paper. At night, he would tell me stories of the spirits that lived beneath the currents, of women with hair like seaweed who sang men to sleep, of warriors who dipped their blades in river water to make them unbreakable.
When he died, I couldn’t find his voice in the house anymore. I tried listening to the walls, to the chair he used to sit in, to the floorboards where his footsteps used to echo. Nothing. The only place I could still hear him was the river. But something had changed. The water didn’t pull at me like before. It didn’t try to tell me secrets. It only watched. It only waited.
I didn’t understand what it was waiting for until years later, when my father came home with a letter. It was from a university in Jakarta, offering me enrollment, a chance to leave. The words felt heavy in my hands. My mother cried, my sister hugged me too hard, but my father only nodded. That night, I went to the river one last time. I stepped into the water, let it wrap around my ankles, and for the first time, I spoke back.
I whispered everything — my fears, my hopes, my guilt. I told the river that I was leaving, that I didn’t know if I’d ever come back. And then, as if it had been waiting for me to say it, the water curled against my skin, just like it had when I was eight years old.
It spoke.
It told me to go.
Jakarta smelled different. The air was thick, the streets restless. I had spent my whole life listening to the quiet hum of Malang, where the mountains held the sky in place and the river told stories to anyone willing to listen. But here, the city buzzed with a noise I couldn’t quite understand. Cars honked, vendors shouted, motorcycles weaved through impossible gaps. At night, I pressed my ear to the walls of my tiny rented room, listening for something familiar. But there was nothing. No voices in the walls, no whispers from the floor.
The only water nearby was the murky canal that ran through the city like an old scar. I stared at it sometimes, wondering if it carried stories too, but all it ever did was move sluggishly under bridges, thick with plastic bags and forgotten things.
I kept my head down at university, studying business because it was what my father had wanted. “A fisherman’s son should know how to count what he catches,” he had said once. I didn’t argue. I sat in classrooms that smelled of ink and ambition, surrounded by students who spoke like they were already important. They talked of stocks and market trends, of building empires from ideas. I listened, nodded when needed, but I carried my own stories in my pocket like small stones, worn smooth by time.
It was in my second year that I met Raka. He had the kind of presence that filled a room, like he belonged wherever he stood. He spoke with his hands, like words alone weren’t enough to contain him. He was the first person who made the city feel less foreign.
“Malang, huh?” he said when I told him where I was from. “I bet you miss the air.”
I nodded. “And the river.”
“You talk about it like it’s a person.”
“Maybe it is.”
He laughed, but there was something in his eyes that said he understood. Over time, we became friends. He introduced me to places that didn’t feel so loud — hidden cafes, quiet bookstores, the small park near campus where the trees still remembered how to breathe.
One evening, we found ourselves walking along the canal, the city lights flickering on the water’s surface.
“You ever think about going back?” Raka asked.
“All the time.”
“So why don’t you?”
I didn’t have an answer. Maybe because I was afraid. Maybe because I wasn’t sure if the river would still recognize me.
The call came in the middle of the night. My mother’s voice was small, almost swallowed by the static. My father was gone. A heart attack, sudden, unexpected.
The next morning, I was on a train home. The city blurred past the window, dissolving into fields, into mountains, into something I could finally understand again. When I arrived, the house looked smaller, as if it had shrunk in my absence. My mother’s hands were colder, my sister’s embrace tighter. The silence in the house was unbearable.
At the funeral, neighbors whispered condolences, voices thick with the weight of grief. My father had been a quiet man, but his absence was loud. I stood beside his grave, feeling the earth under my feet, solid and unyielding. But something inside me was shifting, like a tide turning.
That night, I walked to the river. The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth. I stepped into the water, let it curl around my ankles. And then, without thinking, I spoke.
“I’m home.”
The river moved, rippling against my skin. And for the first time in years, I heard it again.
It whispered back.
Not in words, but in something older, something deeper. It carried the weight of my grief, my questions, my regrets. It carried the stories I had left behind, the ones I had tried to silence.
And in that moment, I knew.
Some things flow away. But some things find their way back.
Fendy Satria Tulodo is a writer and musician from Malang, Indonesia, who believes that stories are meant to be felt, not just read. When not creating, he spends his time observing the unnoticed details of everyday life, searching for the quiet moments that speak the loudest. By day, he works in the motorcycle sales industry; by night, he lets words and melodies carry him elsewhere.
