The night air was cold. The weather was unnaturally chilly, as if the coldness she had imbibed since ages had enveloped the atmosphere as well! The sky was a shade darker with a few less glimmering stars while the moon too was partially hidden behind clouds, emanating a shine weaker than usual. She sat by the fireplace where a low flame flickered as it burnt, her head resting against the cold wall.
Strange - that was what she felt. That was what filled the void she had forcefully regained back after pushing those conflicting yet strong feelings to the deepest depths of her heart! And peculiar it indeed was for after years she sought to sit near warmth, near a place that held enough significance from years left far behind.
It wasn't unusual for her to sit the way she sat now, lost in thoughts undeciphered yet today, everything felt different. She wrapped her arms around her folded legs and pulled them closer, curling into herself just like she used to as a child, when she was in doubt or fear. For the first time in years she had felt something, even if it was guilt and for the first time in years, she felt an emotion that had plagued her for long before her final undoing - fear!
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After a realisation that left him feeling as melancholic as it felt blissful, he had spent a few hours strumming the guitar, playing myriads of tunes, some famous while some others self-composed.
Now sitting curled up by the fireplace, he tended to the hurt at her actions that had multiplied tenfolds after the unanticipated realisation sometime back. He watched as the embers raged, burnt and doused only to light up again, feeding the fire to glow on and radiate the heat that was needed of it. So alike him wasn't it? So alike him to burn yet light back because him burning and dousing was inconsequential with respect to her glowing. A light chuckle escaped his lips. It wasn't always isn't it that the Ice Maiden is compared to burning flames!
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The solitude by the fire was as alike as different to their respective solitudes at times unlike the present. Because it opened up emotions long frozen in one and nursed the splinters stabbed into another. It brought both to seek warmth from the flame - to one who hadn't from ages and to another who had been oblivious towards it.
And so, by their respective fireplaces, two souls contemplated on each other and what was between them.
Of course the ice hadn't unfrozen completely and hence, contemplation wasn't what Prachi Mehra was doing by the fireplace. She was instead gathering back pieces of herself and weaving them into a mask of hatred she had to donne, forever and always. She quashed the guilt within her and stuffed it back to depths unchartered. And then followed those futile attempts to weave back the hole in her frozen heart followed by a decision to donne the mask regardless of everything, regardless of him!
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Do share your views
PS: Since this isn't the actual chapter, it is short and doesn't have the beginning quote I always put as stated by Ranbir.
Love,
Pratyusha
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Splinters Of Ice | Pranbir
Fanfiction..... Prachi x Ranbir AU ...... // Can be read as general fiction // An enigma she was, unfathomable depths she held within herself. Every interaction with her asserted the same. Yet like moth to the flame, he was drawn to her irrevocably. The plung...
