A Storm on the Mountain

PART II - CHAPTER I

"We must leave this terrifying place tomorrow and go searching for sunshine."
- F. Scott. Fitzgerald, This side of Paradise

The tea laid cold in the cups set on the thick railings, the wind making the filled utensils dance every now and then. They didn't fall. On the wooden floors of the veranda, a plate with crumbs and flakes of dry cake, a neat spot of jam was kept recklessly- where thwarting flies kept buzzing happily, or perhaps in dismay?

Butter kept herself on her hairless stomach, her golden, fluffy body moving in waves with the cold breeze that didn't even faze her, while she kept looking at the buzzing flies making circles around the plate. Once or twice, she jumped her paw at the insects but they managed to escape. When she directly tried to bite them, they flew between her massive teeth and she whined in disappointment. Her hunting game was incomplete.

While the door remained not locked, but shut, the voices that bounced of the walls were tangled with pain, pleasure and release. They reflected off the building and mingled with the air left to breath- dancing their way across the petit house in happiness, echoing like the screams had reached the valleys.

All these years, there was no one that Aanav allowed to unravel himself. Like every brick placed on the other to build, Aanav's walls of insecurity grew- his disappointed heart shrinking like from a grape to a raisin. Anytime the desire began to make it's way through his delicate skin, he built comfort for himself in his armed loneliness. When the nights lasted longer than usual, he'd curl himself up like a lost puppy, plop the blanket around and below him, and sang to himself poetry of the lost skies.

Isolation became a family, chaos became a part of his undoing. He tried, out of nervousness sometimes, to talk, to meet, to perhaps try- but in vain. The moment he walked up to someone, his heart broke, just like that, with no words or sound. It was the way he was built, raised, a child lost for love; in self-taught isolation, a tree on a barren land, fire on snow, water on fire.

But Aanav was accustomed to such scenes: to blend in the environment like a chameleon did, to hide from the world, to survive not live. In fact, he had kept himself so absent, that everyone around him began to notice that there was something below the stone that seemed unfamiliar. His life was like a busy city- sinisterly quiet- every relationship that ever built it's foundations there crumbled, some were left dangling, incomplete, while some kept clawing, screeching at the edges of those high walls he'd unknowingly built.

It was the shepherd, only with his hoarse voice, his blind yet bright gaze; at times meat-stenched and at times naturally flowered odour that crept through the cracks of Aanav's happiness. They'd meet quiet often, if not everyday. The man lived a lonely life like Aanav, only less lonely- Aanav thought, because he had his lambs. He took them for a walk everyday, especially through the dark, wet, muddy, grassed peak that only bore one house. He took those animals through the town that stood intact, and then along the lowland and climbing on the peak.

Secretly, he did that to see Aanav, or sense his presence, to smell the natural sweat of human, of man, of water and earth, of fresh herbs. Even though the lights in his life were turned off for literally ever, he could see or imagined the smoothness of Aanav's skin, the sculptural simplicity of his body, the thick and rough unwashed hair.

One evening, the shepherd showed up at the wolf's hideout (even though the villagers kept warning him). It was supper that Aanav had cooked from scratch, a curry spiced up with vegetables that when he poured into two different bowls, had rice floating over the thick gravy. After their meal, they spoke about life, telling each other tales of their childhood- some good, some not very. The shepherd asked Aanav to read aloud, to him for there were no books on that mountain in braille. Aanav obliged, and tucked his hand into a plastic basket, fetching a book he himself wasn't sure of who'd written.

you must have a
honeycomb
for a heart

Aanav read, huskily, smiling. He'd never been asked to read anything to anyone. For him, it was naturally a performance, an act of preserving a memory, of impressing, of tomorrow, of organically living.

how else
could a man
be this sweet

- rupi kaur

Aanav turned his face to look at his only audience, to find the face startlingly close- so close that nothing else was possible. Nothing passed between them, except for the unsure exhaling that escaped both the men, their nostrils flaring in naivety. Neither seemed sure or confident, as if doubting that the sun would never rise from the East again.

"Aanav," the man with meat trousers whispered, an involuntary act, but one that felt it made sense, was right and had escaped his lips so naturally.

The sound crawled and shivered throughout Aanav's skin, starting at his upper lip where the sigh hit first, and then racing on the sensitive surface of his tired skin. It echoed inside his clothes, the jacket, the pyjamas, the wild blue shirt and he watched the name form again, with such passion that he began feeling himself go hot, so warm that his nipples swelled, his chest began to struggle to take in enough oxygen.

The soft touch of the kiss was new, a first. It was exotic, sweet and too tender, too much care and emotion in it- such that his body began to give out involuntary shivers, so much so that his partner reached out to hold the shoulders down, then massaging towards the elbows and eventually holding each other, finger by finger. Locked.

And that was the only time it was new.

The newness developed into a need, with new sensations. They met more, touched even more. At times, they just held onto each other like every corner of a weak branch folded into one bark. The leaves and flowers rained around them, scattering carefully, blissfully kissing their bare skin, and they kept dancing recklessly, happily.

While Butter sat there playing with tired flies, screams began building into Aanav's chest and floating into his stomach. When the movements stopped, the bodies stayed glued, wanting to let go never. They watched the eyes of the other, losing minds (hearts already lost), as if knowing that every little ounce and fragment of their broken hearts started to create a new ocean of vastness. And they both dripped off this water of love, a Fountain in Paris.

With clouded eyes, they'd already stopped thinking. The time had passed for that. It came in dismay.

Aanav moved closer, the shepherd caved him in- wanting to touch more, feel more, if there was any other inch of that body that remained untouched. Nothing else was left to say.