Where Parallels Meet

Chapter 14

(Her POV)

Somewhere frozen: The next week

Goosebumps prickled my skin, under the heavy layers that shielded me against the biting cold, as I leaned against the lone, sturdy tree behind me.

I blinked, violently, as the misty cold burnt my eyes, numbing every bit of exposed skin. The cold justified the shivers. Just the cold.

The darkness stretched on like a silken cloth, creasing in the distance where the mountain top angled down steeply. The clear night opened to a ceiling of not just the sky, but that of the universe.

Millions of stars, more than I had beheld in all my days put together, shone overhead, without the moon. I had removed the headphones ages ago, so all I heard was the distant music that the galaxy emitted. The music of silence.

The taste in my mouth was metallic, but the whiff of the chaste night was sweet. Almost overwhelming.

In that moment, under the shiny darkness of a million eyes blinking upon me from the sky, I felt alone in the world. Pleasantly, carelessly, absolutely, and completely alone.

Alone enough to let myself tear up on the night's shoulder, without judging myself, for the first time ever since I started waking up hopeless every morning, with a sleep deprived of dreams.

On the end of the grassy earth that I occupied, was asphalt that would lead you higher, to a colder, lonelier place, where breathing was even harder, and it led you down too, paradoxically, where there were people: to an even colder and even lonelier place, where breathing was even harder, too.

On the other end, was quite literally just darkness which was unfathomable at this hour.

And in the middle of these two infinities was I.

Just I,

And the music of silence drifting soft and slow,

Gradually clambering down notches as time flew by.

I was content, at peace, even with the tears that drizzled heedless of their reason or effect. I was even happy, with myself, ready to unload my knapsack of the toils of yesterday, leaving them here, right in the middle of nowhere, and taking along the stars that lit up the moonless night...

...until the heaven came crashing down to the very grit.

"It's been hell down there without you."

Said a hurtfully familiar voice laced too heavily with...agony?

Shudders wrecked my spine, and this time, cold was no justification. I sighed, helpless, and lonely, left at the mercy of the downpour of memories the voice had brought along.

I had been pulling the elastic slowly, carefully, and here he just snapped it right in halves. It hurt how he was so unreal, so out of my reach.

And beside the demon that belched agony with every breath inside me, there was fear. I was afraid of myself more than I was afraid of anything else.

Noiselessly freeing my eye lashes of the tears that still dared to cling, I steeled myself against the cold, and standing up, headed back towards the lonelier, colder place. Anywhere but here.

"I can't stop you..." his voice sounded while I still continued walking away. "...but I can't take it anymore." It cracked. And it cracked whatever determination I was holding on to, too.

The shards of helplessness that recklessly flew in all directions brought me to my knees. As if all the fight had been extinguished, tired, yet raging, like a dying storm, that blazed to be calmed down.

Just a couple steps, behind me, he felt light-years away. We were like a set of parallel lines which were never meant to meet. Ever.

For the first time in my life, I doubted the universe that night. I felt it was flawed. The flaw was a trivial imbalance, which was like unsteady earth beneath my feet.

If we were parallels, that never intersect, why did the distance between, seem to intensify every moment?

He coaxed me back to the tree where I had been peacefully quitting on it all, in my silence, and where he had been sitting too, secretly eavesdropping, on the sniffles that I now regretted.

"Huh." He said at a clear loss of words.

"Why are you here J?" I asked, as my heartbeat raced at the use of speech maybe.

"It's like an infinity isn't it?" he answered. His eyes bearing into everything around, committing every detail to memory.

"Is that why?" I asked in an irksome tone.

"Isn't it?" his eyes dropped like a shooting star to where I sat staring unblinking into the universe.

At this point, he was all questions when answers were what I needed. I knew better than to prod any further, I didn't want anything to do with any of it now. So I just let my thoughts wander to the universe.

After a thousand silent years, he finally decided to rip my trance. "Y'know French fries were not made in France."

"Are you crazy?" I snapped, fighting the rage that his stupidity had resurfaced, and rolled my eyes at him.

"For you? Yeah!" he muttered.

I sprang to my feet again, annoyed, and impatient. "Go away J." I said before heading towards the asphalt.

I turned back, on not receiving a stupid retort for this one, to see hollow darkness where he had just been.

He was nowhere in sight.

I was breathless by the time I strode back to the tree, it was just darkness. "Javed?" I called to the emptiness which was flooding my system.

"Javed." I called to the distance, afraid out of my wits. Where had he disappeared?

It was literally nothing beyond where I stood, and the thought that overshadowed everything else was, that he'd have made not a single sound if...

"JA-VED." I yelled on the top of my lungs, leaving them airless, and burning.

"Ananya." He called from behind me, sitting peacefully under the tree he had initially been sitting under. I ran over to him, still panting, my heart pulsing manically in my stomach.

"What happened?" he asked conversationally.

I was mad at him, indeed. But not mad enough to not be relieved.

"You...you can't just vanish." I heaved a fatigued sigh.

"I thought you wanted me to?" he said questioningly.

"I...obviously didn't mean it." I said plopping on the ice, hugging my knees for body heat.

"That was just five minutes..." He said quietly, not disturbing the placid music of silence. "...could you live without me, forever?" he added satirically.

Could I?

I knew not.

His questions had answered all of my questions, except the one whose answer lay safe with time. I didn't know the ending of this story.

And hence, 'If you can't drive a story to its destination, you ought to find a beautiful turn, and drop it.'

This is the right turn indeed. I thought as we both turned on the road that went both upwards and down. Just our fingers fiercely entwined.

Oh also, parallel lines, do meet at infinity.

:)

*THE END*

. . .

Author's Note:

Hello beautiful people! 

A genuine thanks to you, for reading my book! I hope you liked it. Please share your feedback with me in the comments. 

Good day!

:)