HIS FATAL SHADES (BOOK-TWO)

Part Two.

Part two. 

The soft sound of the wind chime clicking together through the wind filled the air while the breeze continued to dance around the curtains. It must have been the first time where the silence didn't instil terror but brought a soothing calmness and tranquillity with it. Regardless of the fact that even though there was a certain feeling of desolation that was present in the atmosphere, I let myself breathe the calmness that the breeze didn't fail to provide. Unknowingly, my gaze swept back towards the middle of the window where the wind chime remained hanging delicately. I seemed to have been transfixed by it as it kept on moving and making a musical tone and yet I was seeing nothing. My eyes kept on gazing at it blankly with a wide range of thoughts clouding my brain with possibilities. With my mind occupied by the event which took place in the last couple of hours or was it more than a few hours...I couldn't say. I wasn't sure nor I might have been at the right level of my mind when I let him touch me willingly; let him hug me willingly. I closed my eyes and breathed through my mouth. In those unfolded hours, I wasn't sure if it was even me. But the truth couldn't be denied for so long. Could it? 

The sudden sound of the door being opened intruded on my sense of trance. 

"Radhika?" A soft whisper fell into the silence of the room. 

It was Sabba. 

"Oh, are you fine now?" Entering through the wooden door in haste, Sabba asked worriedly. The worried lines on her forehead were displayed when her white complexion of skin glowed in the dim light of the room. 

I managed to nod at her. 

"Oh god! You look so exhausted, Radhika," sitting beside me in the space attached to the window she embraced me. Her hug was warm and soft. I hugged her back as tightly as hers was. Her presence brought a sense of longing. We remained like that for quite a time. I felt warmth spread through me. I felt like someone was here with me and I wasn't entirely alone. That I wasn't entirely lonely. 

"Have you eaten?" She asked, withdrawing from the hug. "You have eaten, right?" Holding my hands in both of hers, she queried again. 

I nodded, once again, blinking several times. 

We fell into a calming silence. None saying a word. 

Her next question had me blinking more than twice. The question was quiet. However, it was barely audible. "Are you still having those nightmares?" My eyes themselves got closed when a breath of stress left me. "I do." In the past few days, I had been here, it was true, the nightmares got worse with time. I nodded. "They are still keeping you awake at night?" I nodded again sensing her reassuring squeeze in my hands. 

"They keep on haunting me to the time I couldn't breath," my voice was soft. Sabba was the only person I considered my friend. Telling her the truth about nightmares, something I hadn't planned to do yet she was there every time I needed to hold onto someone to chase those bad dreams away. Because with time I got to know her, she was, in fact, genuine to me. She cared about me. She was there every time I needed someone to hold me to whisper: that everything was going to be alright. In that regard, she never disappointed me. She never failed me. I trusted her. The absence of my parents left a bigger hole where the void