The Ballad Of Nirvana

Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Indriya could have asked him why he had to walk all the way into the forest for water when her grandparents were the freaking river and sea. But then again, she couldn't really ask him, he looked like he wanted to talk about something and whether or not he made bad decisions, he was still her friend and she never let her friends down.

The moonlight trickled into the selva like water from a spring.

"You know life would be a lot easier for me, if I knew where we were going."

"You don't say?" He scoffed as he walked in front leading the way. It reminded her of the first day they had met and how she had almost broken her nose when she had bombarded into his back.

The cicadas seemed too interested to even click their wings, and the owl was staring at them with keen anxiousness.

"Dude, seriously, what's going on?" She asked worriedly.

"Princess, why do you think I am going to take you to the nearest pond? To catch fish?" He asked and she fell silent for the rest of the strut down a path Agni was navigating.

Their silence and walk were both short lived when Indriya gasped and gulped down the cry of surprise at the sight of what she saw.

"The pond of dreams. It is beautiful, isn't it?" He smiled at her, but there was something sad about his smile.

"The pond of dreams? I don't care what this place is called, it is like moonlight trapped in a bell jar." She said breathily. The flowers all around the pond were blue hibiscuses that glowed like fireflies. She would have thought they were straight out of some fantasy novel had it not been for Agni's forearm that brushed against hers.

"You really are a poetess." He admitted. "Come sit." He motioned for her to sit on the branch of the fallen tree.

"The world made me one, Prince. You know, I never thought that one day I would be standing beside an actual prince at a pond of dreams." The place, although it looked like it took birth yesterday was as ancient as the moon itself, she could feel it in her bones.

"But how did you know this place even existed?" She asked, sitting a little too close beside him. "And why bring me here?"

"A, I did not know this place actually existed, but I saw it, in a weird dream. B, because I wanted to talk." He explained.

"What are these flowers called? What dream?" She asked, taking in a deep breath.

"The flowers are called Nila Mandara Kusumam. Which literally means a blue hibiscus flower. And about that dream, I don't really know if it was recently or not but it was like I was daydreaming and I saw this place." He concluded placing his hands beside him on the branch.

"Did you feel like this place was calling you?" She tried to move away but the groves of the branch did not let her do so. He looked sideways at her and puckered his lips and shook his head.

"Not a calling, I don't know how to explain it, but it felt like I had always known this place, this vision and this beauty is known to me like it flows through my blood." He looked like he was ruminating all possible ways he could have known the place. Maybe heard or read about it somewhere, but Indriya sensed that he couldn't get anything out of it.

"Is that how you felt about Mekhala too?" She dared to ask, and she surely did not know the answer to this and she didn't want to know, but she had to know. He looked at the pond, got off the branch and ambled toward it. He bent over it and plucked one flower and sniffed it.