Talking to the Moon ✔

-Chapter One-

The afternoon sun had ascended to its peak, casting shadows behind every object the rays could touch, shining in its mesmerising brilliance.

I stood at the terrace of my small mud house, picking up clothes from the rope that my mother had left to dry while she argued and cursed the milk man loudly below me.

Little beads of sweat had appeared on my forehead, but I was used to the heat now, every night my family went to sleep after a prayer to God to give us rain.

"Ayah! Come down and help with the food!" I heard my mother yell and I hurried downstairs almost tripping, our house was small with two rooms, a kitchen and a small hall in between when three people couldn't sit together.

I dumped the clothes on my mother's bed and entered the kitchen, my mother was already crouched near the stove, mixing the lentil soup with one hand. I made a face as I saw what was made for lunch. I knew that if my mother was worried, my father and Asad were late for lunch, it happened all the time, but it still worried my mother because she thinks that my father worked a lot.

"It looks like your father and Asad is going to be late. Good for us, we get more time for lunch preparations." Mother said.

I nodded, my father and brother never had a fixed time to return to our home for lunch, sometimes they came in the evening and whenever that happened, my mother would grow furious.

She worries too much, my father would say laughing as he would kiss his wife on the forehead while my mother would push and storm inside the kitchen to give them food.

Even though we were poor, we lived a peaceful and happy life.

My parents were beautiful together and sometimes I dreamt to live a life the way they did. Love marriage was looked down upon in our village and my parents weren't a love marriage either, but they believed in love and they found it in each other. They didn't sit back and question fate and curse their life, they were happy with what they had because they knew that there were so many people in this world who didn't even have that much.

Yes, they did desire for more, my mother always dreamt of buying me a gold headpiece the way she had seen the princesses wear when they came to the village. She said that I would look prettier than them if I wore it. But gold was simply a beautiful farfetched dream; it could never be a reality.

"Ayah! Silly girl, lost in your thoughts again!" my mother yelled pulling me away from my thoughts. She said something under her breath that I couldn't understand and then narrowed her eyes at me.

"Did you hear a word I said?"

I looked down at my slippers.

"Are you deaf right now? Can you not hear your brother yelling his lungs out?"

I realised that my baby brother had woken up and he was crying. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed and leaving the beans I rushed to my room where he lay on the bed, in between two pillows that I had kept so that he wouldn't fall.

I took him in my arms, bobbing him up and down as I tried to give him a smile telling him that I am here. His face had turned red and his tears and snot had mixed together and was running down his chin, but he had never looked so precious before, his wide eyed innocence had always taken my breath away.

Sometimes I longed to be that young again, loved, with no responsibilities in the world, my littlest action getting praised as if I had come from a war.

Once he had stopped crying, I gently placed him in between the pillow as I went to take a towel to wipe his face. He was only four months old but on the thinner side. The village doctor had said that he would be a bit unhealthy because he was born two months early.

I leaned to wipe his face gently and my brother grabbed onto my hair, kicking his small legs as he flashed me a toothless smile. I kissed softly on his cheek while he played with his hands, stuffing them both inside his mouth.

A loud crash from the hall jostled me and the baby puckered his lips, I grabbed him and placed him on my hip as I rushed outside.

"What happened?" I heard my mother scream. The noise had come from her, she had dropped the steel plates that she was carrying when she had seen my older brother, Asad, support my father inside the house. My father's head was bleeding and two men had followed them inside.

"Father was on a ladder fixing the lights of Master Maha's house when he felt dizzy and fell to the ground," Asad explained in between pants as he placed my father on the chair. My mother rushed towards her husband and the two village men who had come to help us gave a parting glance and left.

"Ayah, go get your father water." My mother instructed, "Asad, go get me the kit. God help me, my husband has gone nuts, he does not understand that he is no more a young man!"

"I have grown older but I am young from within." My father said as I handed him water with one hand while cradling the baby from another.

"You have grown older, but you still remain stupid." My mother snapped as she started cleaning the wound with cotton. Her thick eyebrows were furrowed in concentration, her lips pressed in a thin line.

"I have to go again after lunch, Master Maha is having a party, lots of people are coming." My father said after a while of silence.

"Send Asad." Was my mother's eloquent reply?

"He needs me there."

"Why? Is this party for you?"

"No."

"Send Asad."

"This might be the last party that Master Maha will ever give, his grand children are coming, he needs me there, I am not just his servant, I am also his friend. He has told me things that he wouldn't tell the world." My father said sternly, this was the sign that there would be no more discussion on this matter.

My mother sighed loudly, showing clearly that she still had lots to say in the matter but won't because she respected her husband. But I knew my mother and I knew that she won't give up until she had made some amends of her own in this agreement.

"You will have to take both Asad and Ayah to the party then. I do not trust the boy but I do trust my girl to keep you in check so that you don't stress yourself with someone else's party."

"But Ayah is not invited..." my father protested.

My mother raised her eyebrow at him, challenging him, and then said quietly -

"I thought Master Maha and you were friends. I suppose he wouldn't mind you taking your daughter along with you."

Name facts!

Ayah - a miracle.

Asad - lion.