A Lot Like Moon & Stars | ✓

17 | aspidiske

xvii.

A S P I D I S K E (shield)

Spending time with Tara feels surreal; kissing her feels surreal. The moments I spent with her would be treasured for forever, deep down in my heart. Until I knew things were certainly going to tumble down the next day.

Tara was going to be operated the next day, when the realization hits my heart, I cannot help but feel nothing one moment, and then suddenly, I feel everything. I feel too much alive, that every cell in my body breathes out fire, and I'm gasping because I want this to be unreal. The darkness is pulling me in, and all I can hear is my dad's voice going I love you, and I'm proud of you but I've to go; Shaurya's voice going Please tell Anvi that I love her but I've to go; Tara's voice going I love you and I'll never leave you.

[Never.

Leave.

You.]

I enter the room with a smile, as I bring up the tray with two cups filled with Latte upto my face to cover it. From the corner of my eyes I see how her health has deteriorated; a haphazard blockade creates in my head thinking, at what point did her health begin to worsen so much? And then I realize, it was since the very beginning when I saw her vomitting her guts out, it was then when I noticed.

And it was already too late then.

"Why are you looking at me as if I'm an animal kept in the zoo?" Tara asks with a wistful chuckle, as she closes her eyes. I wonder if the vision in eye is lost completely because it was getting worse over the week after the Charity Ball we had been.

No you're not. I want to tell her. You're not some animal kept in zoo but you're my Bellatrix, you're my female warrior made of stars and diamonds and gold, and not even God can keep you away from me.

"You can't even see me," I retort, keeping the tray on the nightstand. Tara simply looks away because she knows. She knows that I know her better than herself. She doesn't have to lie to me now. "You can't see me."

"It's good that I don't have to see you cry." She smiles and my heart slightly shatters. It has happened a million times to it, and yet it never learns how to not shatter.

"I'm not crying." I rebuke, wiping away my tears violently. "I don't even have tear glands in my body." Laughing, I hoist myself onto his bed, dangling my feet with hers. All I want to do is cuddle with her and pretend that everything's okay. That tomorrow is going to be just another ordinary day.

But it's not that way.

"Do you realize," she begins, her breath grazing my cheek gracefully, her voice only audible because it is treacherously close to my ear. "The first time we met, you saved me from falling? You, kind of, saved me from dying?"

"Do you realize that the first time we met, you almost did a suicidal thing to yourself by going for abseiling?" I ask in return, my fingertips tracing patterns on her skin.

"Do you realize you're always saving me? That you're a shield for me. Only you can let me go."

"Maybe," I sigh, laying a kiss atop of her head, and letting myself touch her fragile skin which seemed bereft of health and warmth. "Remember when I told you to never leave me?" I hear Tara nod at the statement, as she looks at me in wonderment. Her face tells me that she knows what I want to say.