DARJIN

A Colourful Sickness

Grief is a weird thing. It's like a hard rock sitting in your chest; you can't swallow it or throw it up.

Sorrow seems, incredibly easy for some. Others, how do they even begin to comprehend it?

To mourn feels complicated.

What feelings were deemed correct at the loss of a loved one?

...Zari thought to herself, entrenched, lost in the influx of thinkings, thinkings, thoughts, spiralling.

It became too much too quickly, though, nobody would suspect that outwardly. No, for Zarifa Nasim, to hide her emotional reality was almost a talent. Her mind was a clay pot, each thought, emotion, feeling, poured into it like dye, encapsulating itself within and refusing to spill out. She did not want to make sense of them, not right now anyway. Like a flood of colours. They swirled and spilt, filling the pot to the absolute brim, pasteurising a colourful sickness. A sickness of feelings. There was too much there to understand.

It was a stormy night, the winds of Baazadi howled through the tiniest cracks on the road, dust encompassing its bodyless dance. It was so cold it stung, and the rain was almost salty. A state of circumstance that, for Zari, harmonized with her loss.

Kotori was dead.

Her sister, older sister, one of the most powerful women in Baazadi alone. The leading officer of the Saladin, a dictator's most trusted soldiers. Baazadi's dictator's most trusted soldiers.

She was murdered.

And to come remotely close to terms with it, felt like squeezing blood out of a rock to Zari. Hell, she wasn't ready to try and squeeze it, not now.

Because none of it made sense to her.

She stared at the pile of documents, kitabein, and scrunched-up scrolls sitting on her lap, moving slightly in her seat. Her hands were cold and her jaw tense. The charpai she was sitting on had a poking piece of wood tickling her leg, but no heed was paid.

Zari let out a begrudgingly low sigh.

The front door abruptly swung open.

Not a flinch.

There stood a young-looking man, tall, with a beautifully deep, glowing complexion, enwrapped with light patches. A hair colour too abstract to be labelled mahogany. He was enwrapped in a deep purple kameez, accents of mustard hovering the neckline. The rain flattened his effortlessly lush ponytail, now seeping like a heavy cloth bag.

Though Zari needn't look up to know who it was, his scent was more than enough of a giveaway.

"I've been waiting for, what, 2 hours?"

"Forgive me, Masi Ji, I can't control the weather."

Akeno let his hair down. Only around Zari would he ever show an ounce of sass, and even that was rare. He wrung his hair out with an unused chaadar, his damp leather backpack slapping the floor.

Soon enough, he became engulfed in his ever-lasting softness, looking towards her.

"How are you holding up?"

It had been a few days since she found out about her sister's death. Needless to say, they've been some of the hardest wakes of her life.

"Eh."

"Ah."

"I think I'm frustrated."

"About what?"

She dramatically pointed at the pile in front of her, knocking it over in doing so.