Nature's Comeback

31- Scary eyes

Neer stared at Ahana with guilt, who was looking ahead with silence. She looked calm but he knew that he had hurted her with his nonsensical actions.

"Ahana, I swear that I understood my stupidness right away and was about to come back—"

"You don't need to explain, Neer. The absence of your bike and the presence of them," Ahana pointed towards Maanvi and Koko, "is a dead giveaway of what actually happened."

Ahana waved off his apology while eyeing Maanvi who was holding Koko tightly. Ahana wasn't sure whether the girl was doing this to protect her dog from slipping away as the patch was shaking badly while it floated. Or was she actually trying to gather strength from her 'brother.'

Maanvi had been silent since the time she found out about their powers. Her whole attention was on Koko, or so they thought.

"What are we going to do about her?"

Ahana's question caused Maanvi to flinch, making the former girl aware that Maanvi had her ears towards them. Maanvi had been listening to their conversation while pretending to focus on Koko.

Neer glanced at Maanvi, who had frozen with fear. "We aren't going to kill you or keep you as a hostage. So stop your over working imagination," Neer said in a loud voice, directly addressing Maanvi, instead of answering Ahana.

"Were you really thinking that?" Ahana asked in a surprised tone as she saw Maanvi's shoulders relax a little. The girl still wasn't facing them, but her body language gave it right away about her thoughts.

"Don't scare the poor girl," Sameera remarked.

Ahana took full offense to the statement. "What did I even do?" Ahana threw her hands up in frustration.

"Your eyes are scary enough," Sameera replied with a chuckle.

"True. She doesn't need to do anything else to scare people," Neer agreed, laughing as well.

"See, see her scary eyes are back," Neer pointed out, while still laughing uncontrollably as Ahana glared at Neer and Sameera.

"Ahana Didi, don't listen to them. They are just being mean," Avan consoled her with a cute smile, coming to stand beside her.

"Thank you, kiddo. But please don't come here on the edge. You might fall down if the patch shakes a little more." Ahana gently guided Avan towards the middle of the patch, so he could stay safe. She too sat beside him, ignoring the laughing duo.

They didn't even realize that while making fun of each other, they reduced Maanvi's fear to a great extent. Their scary projection in Maanvi's mind slowly started disappearing as they behaved like normal human beings. But that didn't mean that she was totally fine. She knew that no matter how nice they were to each other, there were going to be dire consequences of knowing their secret.

Maanvi cursed herself. If only she hadn't taken Neer with her to find Koko, she wouldn't have been trapped in this situation. It wasn't like she needed his help. She was capable enough to go towards her home alone and find Koko. But Neer's presence had felt like a safety net. When everyone was running away, ignoring her, while thinking about their safety, Neer had stopped to make sure that she was okay. She had felt safe with him.

Maanvi didn't know whether to chuckle or cry at the irony. The person whose presence made her feel safe a few minutes ago, was the one whose presence was scaring the life out of her.

Maanvi flinched when she suddenly felt Neer sit beside her. It wasn't his presence alone that caused her to flinch. The fact that she had been thinking about him just then, added to her fear. She hoped that he didn't have any mind reading capabilities.

"The handkerchief has come loose," Neer informed in a low voice as he started wrapping it again.

Maanvi stared at him as he worked on her wounded palm. Forget about responding, she didn't even move in fear of angering him.

"It's so funny. You weren't scared of my anger when you manipulated me into thinking that we were going to save your brother, when in truth we were saving your dog. But now, when you see that I have some powers, you are scared shitless.

"Don't you think if I wanted to harm you, I would have done it long ago? You know when you actually irritated the hell out of me."

"You might not have reacted because you were trying to hide your powers. But now that everything is open, you might punish me for our previous encounter. It's not like it has been ages since that incident happened," Maanvi blurted out, before palming her mouth.

She looked at Neer with scared wide eyes. Her mother had told her that her mouth was going to get her into trouble one day. Looks like that day came.

Neer slowly nodded, taking in her words. Although it wasn't the truth, Neer knew that Maanvi wasn't in fault for thinking like that.

Knowing that his close presence was making her scared, he stood up to leave. But before going he spoke up in the gentlest voice he could muster, "Can you please think about what all happened since the disaster took place?

"Once you go over everything, you will realize that contrary to our image in your mind that we will do harm, we have been only trying to help and save people."

Neer left, letting her mule over his words. He knew that Maanvi was smart enough to put all the dots together and see the truth soon.