When Stars Collide

The Landing Of a Lifetime

Hello everyone, Hi.

It's been two months since I last showed my face here and I cannot begin to apologize. I'm sorry and I hope you all pick up this story again.
Thank you for all the thousands of reads we acquired over the past two months. I'm grateful.

You can tell your friends now, Salman and Hibba are back!

Steady reading though, I didn't edit it.

"Miyar Shuwaka and semo? " 

After testing the idea of that in her head, Hibba nodded and laid back in the bed. As she waited for them to bring the food, she took out her phone to call Anty Maryam who had offered to take in Ummi while she was in Bauchi. Hibba had routinely called Ummi the whole time and now that she would return home in a day, she wanted to hear her baby's voice. 

"Assalamualaikum Anty, Ina Wuni." She greeted Anty Maryam who said back her Salam and asked how the wedding was going. She gave as much information as she could before politely asking for Ummi. 

"She's here waiting." Ummi's gurgling and huffing reached the phone, prompting Hibba's laughter. She prompted Ummi to speak saying, "Hello! Ummi mama." 

"Heyyo! Heyyoo" Hibba's laughter doubled, in a bid to stem the tears that seemed to want to fall. She had solidly missed her baby and wanted nothing but to breathe in her sweet baby scent again. 

"She's doing very well, she walks a little straighter now." Hibba smiled in happiness, Ummi had begun walking a few weeks before, her feet tottering unsteadily everywhere she felt like walking to. She would even force Hibba to set her down, just to walk a few steps and get tired. 

"Alhamdulilah, maybe when I return she'll stop getting tired after ten steps." Anty Maryam laughed heartily and ended the call. 

"Aunty, someone is asking of you outside the gate." Hibba stopped in the process of taking out the comforter tucked into the bed to cover herself in surprise. She knew no one in Bauchi. 

"What does the person look like?" She asked the girl who brought the message. Chichi had returned to her hotel and would only return in the morning to follow them during the bride's conveyance, Nafeesah's conveyance to Abuja. 

"I don't know, a boy told me from the gate that they're looking for aunty Hibba, and I came here to tell you." Hibba nodded and thanked the girl, turning around to slip on a blue hijab that belonged to Nafeesah who was sleeping in her mother's room tonight. 

She picked up a pair of flipflops she had set out to be packed and took it with her, feeling like she walked through air as she navigated the house in Nafeesah's very large and comfy hijab. 

At the door, she set down her flipflops and stepped into them, before walking to the main gate where she smelt him even before she saw him. Salman Baazinye. 

She stopped, trying to calm her racing heart and shut the gate, stepping back into the enclosed compound. She rested her back on the concrete wall that divided the pedestrian gate and the vehicular one, with a hand to her chest she said a Dua to calm down. 

"He's just Cinnamon eyes and ringlet hair. He's just Salman Baazinye. Stop being so dramatic." She told herself before turning to go out of the gate, she awkwardly greeted the gateman who had been looking at her funny since she shut the gate with a bang. 

She shuffled her feet, her flipflops dragged on the interlocking floor, finally reaching a few steps from Salman after a few seconds. 

"Hi." He said, as though he didn't know how dashing he looked in that baby blue kaftan he was wearing. She pouted as response and he sighed imperceptibly, she drew in a breath of her own, so loudly that he sharply looked up.