Metaphor ||✔

|16|

Once someone's hurt you, it's harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn't stop you from wanting them.

Annika read the quote, tagged it in the daily paper within no seconds the paper was crumpled and thrown away. Coincidentally, it precisely harmonized with her life. She dreamed for her mother, a mother who would stay by her in all difficulties, a mother she would love to the core. But what she hoped was never fulfilled. Fate had different plans.

Her heart ached when she pretended to hate her mother, she would never wish to do so. Nevertheless, her deserted life didn't even benefit her. When her mother came searching her, deep inside she felt delighted reasoning that at least someone was thinking of her other than her beloved husband.

Pushing her thoughts aways, she walked into her aunt's house jostling the curtains off from her face. Her lips stretched into a huge smile, seeing her younger brother Sahil solving a math problem. She softly stepped to him and sat beside looking at him. His soft curls sloped on his forehead and time by the time he constantly tugged them, facing problems in his vision.

"Sahil." He looked at her with amusement layering him. Without wasting any time, he jumped on her wrapping his arms around her body.

"Gadha. Get down, she is not supposed to carry a tonne" Chachi Ji walked into the picture with a few clothes in her hands, folded neatly and ready to set in the Almira. Sahil pouted as his mother called him a donkey and specifically commented on his weight.

"Sahil, tum kitne pyaare ho" Annika fondly pinched his cheeks as he got down from her and illustrated a huge grin seeing her.

"Sahil go play with your friends. You are always inside, should mingle with others. Go" Chachi Ji pushed her son out. Sahil glared at his mother for shoving him away from the conversation they were supposed to have.

"Didi, SSO?" He asked looking around to find him, perhaps, none was viewed other than Annika.

"He will come next time. He fell from stairs and hurt his legs, he is resting." Annika ruffled his soft curls while answering him happily. Annika hated lying, but could she reveal the actual reason. You're jiju self-harmed and is recovering. It was nonsense.

"Thek hein vo?" Sahil inquired listening to her. "Ha. He is fine. He sent you a cake he baked for you." She passed him a plastic packet, which was trapped in a brown paper bag.

"Thank you much, didi." He squealed and jumped gaily looking at the packet.

In these few days, this was her genuine smile. Her life was twisted. And every turn was waiting for her. But with Sahil, she was once again a free bird without any responsibility to remember. She was herself, with him. The smile spread on his face was so authentic that she wished to smile like him.

"Go play." Like an obedient child, Sahil ran put not before stuffing a piece of cake in his mouth.

Just one glimpse at Annika, Monali her aunt had understood the unsaid words stirring in her heart. Annika was an open book all her life, anybody could read her. It didn't need some special powers to do so. When she would be happy she would spread with her surrounding the same but the exact wasn't with her sorrow. She did mostly hide all of the time. She was specifically a queen. As a Queen, she turned her pain and sorrows into her strengths.