The letter down my door

The Insatiable Desire

Late spring, Early Summer. I remember this moment; I remember this feeling. The sky grumbled just this way, these familiar rolls of thunder echoing among these hills preceded with the heavy pouring downfall.

It's just like that day, when the rain stained the ground in blotches and now here this letter under my door sits tucked, I remember. I remember her, suddenly, this feeling of yearning tugging at my heart is taking over me...

This is the same, I realise. I felt like this when I first saw you. She was the girl who appeared right in front of my eyes with the thunder and disappeared with the rain buzzing a sad melody with the patters on the ground, the day these thunder struck the western ghats. On a day that wasn't quite summer and wasn't quite spring, I met her, and now I long for her again, because today is that day — not quite summer, not quite spring, but something in between and the world is yet dyed again under this nature's melodic rain.

~*~

"Tiyash?" My mother's voice rang into my ears. "Tiyash! Get up. Would you mind getting one and a half litres of milk? Quickly, before it rains harder. Here's 80 rupees– you can get yourself a snack on the way home."

I opened my mouth to protest, pouting at the wall in some childish display of rebellion. "But mom, I don't wanna— "

"Tiyash..? Sounds like you wouldn't love sevai kheer for dinner?"

"Fine, fine! I'm going!" I yelped away from my mom's intense gaze, grabbing the 80 rupees and a pair of sandals on the way out.

As far as life goes, rainy days are harbingers of chaos. As I sprinted down the soaked asphalt path, money stuffed into the right-side pocket of my jacket and shopping bag over my head, I heard a girl's voice, shrill with panic.

"TWILIGHT!" she called out. "TWILIGHT!" Probably her pet bird, presumably missing from its cage where she'd left it. I moved along without much thought to the matter.

Flash forward to the store. I tapped my foot impatiently, waiting for the shopkeeper to pay back my change. He did so as he called his wife (in a miraculously slow manner, mind you)-- something about The weather forecast looks terrible tonight, and Looks like I'll be sleeping in the shop. Have dinner without me. A solid two minutes later, he passed a handful of coins and the milk back to me.

While getting out of the shop, I was startled as I saw a lightning split a jagged fracture in the sky, accompanied by a typhoon-worthy onslaught of rain. Then, of course, the classic roaring thunder cleaving the sky in halves. Really? Today? I sighed, bolting for home.

On a side note, common sense states bolting through solid mud with sandals is a terrible idea. Small chunks of muck clung to my sandals and some to my feet. Some of it had splattered on my shorts, leaving stains in suspicious places where they didn't belong.

It probably had more to do with the three mysteriously missing hours of my day. Dear reader, if you think it's the girl.... Haaaaa.

I'll leave it up to you to find out as you read on.

But be warned.

There's no amount of prologue suffice to preface the levels of crazy you're about to hear.

~*~

Rewind to my mad dash through the rain. About midway through, a shivering lump came into my line of sight. The girl from earlier, the mad twilight howler. Lying on a bench sheltered by a banyan tree, she shivered uncontrollably, half-mumbling and half-shrieking sounds that dripped half-formed from her tongue and scorched her throat.