The canvas is plain white and the brush in her hands dipped in blue. She lifts it to the canvas and allows it to move the way it pleases. The blue that she paints is azure. It is the shade of the sky on a pleasant day, the color of the blanket keeping a baby warm, the idol of Lord Krishna in her pooja room. It is serenity and peace. But it is also not, because all that is within her is chaos and it has been ever since the moment she met his eyes across the pouring rain and waved at him. Ever since she looked at him and felt a connection she hadn't felt, in such a primordial manner, in the past few conversations. Ever since the realization, after she stepped away from the window, jostled her from the first human connection she had allowed to form in 5 years, with a complete stranger.
It is disconcerting. (more so because she still can't brush it away like she should)
For as long as she can remember the years before she was chained to a monster, she can remember the yearning for connection, love and the casual intimacy of relationships. In her home full of fluctuating undercurrents, she has yearned for stability, warmth and a love that did not palpitate in one square boundary margined by a plethora of things tainting it. She has yearned for a normalcy that is the norm for people around her. She has yearned for somebody to see her as a real, breathing person, beyond her outer appearance of an obese, average looking girl with spectacles, because apparently an appearance like that gives people the right to mutter a thousand things about her. She has yearned for the anchor of the gentle breeze amidst the smoke of insecurities clouding her.
She has but now it's a void, has been since her last hope of love bled out. Has been since all the relationships in her life gave her nothing but cruelty and resentment. Has been since they killed her alive and smiled.
The precise reason why this connection to a practical stranger rattles her.
She will never know why she bothered to initiate the conversation between them. She will never know why him looking so keenly at her painting tugged her into conversations. What she does know is the disbelief and surprise tinged at his reaction to her painting also had a tinge of happiness in it and this is what scares her. The simple, insecure girl in her will always be her weakest point and his words touched that part of her in their genuine admiration. It scares her, the revival of that girl, unveiled from her sarcophagus and the doom she will usher that will not leave her breaths for the next time!
A tear slips down her eyes as she realizes from where to what she has become. Her life was never a flowerbed of roses but it was also not the warpath of thorns. Always in the middle, too ordinary to be noticed and acknowledged! But while she had her hope, her yearning and her ounce of positivity then, she has none of it now or more so, their definitions have changed for her!
The canvas is an abstract mix of various colors against the backdrop of blue, a colorful, chaotic mess of waves and lines and strokes that look gibberish but mean so much because they are the mirrors that reflect her present state. She stares at this through her melancholy and sees what she learns is her fear now- the shattering of the semblance to accept a new storm because she is not equipped to weather it for a second time.
_
"We are best friends right?" she asks the girl next to her, trepidation in her heart and voice. From the past few weeks, she has been feeling her friend pull away from her. From her various preoccupations keeping her from spending time with her to the reluctance in her whenever she moves closer to her.
"Ya why?" the girl asks distractedly, like she is still not bothered about a question that feels like life and death to her because her wandering eyes are searching for something that is apparently of more importance than her.
"Rajita, look at me and tell me"
"Tell you what?" the girl she relies so much on finally looks towards her
"That we are best friends! That nothing has changed" her fear is written all over her visage at this point
"Like seriously? How old are you to behave like this and how bloody insecure! God knows how I've been dealing with you all this while!" Rajita says and walks away.
The wind whistles across her ears but all she can hear are Rajita's words repeating in her head. God all that she had feared all along had come true! She was a burden she knew. But her best friend was supposed to be different. She was supposed to be her choice, her person who understands her, who she means something to. All their moments play in front of her eyes and her tears finally leak from the confines of her eyes. The pain is something hollowing and intense and it claws at her.
All those reassurances were false. All those words of love and encouragement were false. The one relationship she thought is genuine was false.
But of course, because that is exactly what she deserves.
"Of course" she whispers before leaving from the place.
The next day Rajita walks up to her like she hadn't just destroyed her world and apologizes like it can make everything alright.
It can't! But she forgives her either way. (She has always been too weak)
_
After a tumultuous hour, she decides to just let go. All her relationships have had her expectations and hopes as a factor and for once, she decides to let it go, to step in without any expectations.
She feels calm (not serene, just settled)
Friend, her heart says. It is the voice of a parched person whose finally been given water. It is the voice of a nomad who has finally found his home.
"Friend" she whispers
_
WC: 1037 words
Love,
Pratyusha
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Edge Of The Night | ONC2024 ✓
General Fiction[Open Novella Contest - 2024] ONC2024 Longlister Round 1 & 2 Qualifier Prompts: 24,5 Tired of rising from the ashes, when his last reason to hold on falls apart, a man seeking peace moves into a new apartment. What he doesn't expect is to become e...
