Dried Lilies, Withered Hearts And A Lonely Path

•Chapter-8• The awakening

The moment Khushi regained back her senses it was still all dark around her. Pitch black dark. She couldn't see anything. But she could hear things around her. Even distant things. The chirping of different birds, she didn't know how she realized they were different birds. How could she differentiate between different birds chirping? Shouldn't it all sound singular like a single symphony to her? How could she tell the bird apart by its sound? How could she feel a butterfly fluttering over her? How could she feel the ever minute vibrations and eruptions in the air?

It didn't make any sense to her. Has she finally lost her remaining sanity? She didn't know. She just knew that she hadn't felt this serene since she was five-years-old.

Where was she? Why it felt so serene in such darkness? And why does her head hurt so much?

It felt like something was being suppressed in the depths of her brain. Something very important. Something she needed to chase through the dark abyss.

And so she did.

Without any other thought or concern, she chased after something unknown in the dark.

Forsaking her fears and worries, she ran, jogged, and sometimes walked along with the darkness, running her fingers through the swirls of colorful mists appearing out of nowhere in her path.

The red, the blue, the orange, the green, the rustic, the woody, the violent. There seemed to be a symphony of colors in her mind. A carnival of colors and she couldn't help but be strongly drawn towards the stormy whirlpool swirl in her mind.

The swirl with cracking thunder, pure white and purplish blinding flashes of lightning. The swirl smelling like a hurricane and tasting like blood.  The swirl that seemed to define her and so, she let the most cover her whole. Let the black be replaced by the colors of the storm and thunderstorm, grey, brownish grey, bluish grey, dark purple almost black.

The colors were swirling around her frantically creating and uplifting her in a typhoon of dark hues and winds. The winds howled a dangerous melody, the thunder cackled a terrifying tune and the electric discharged around her changed from red to cyan to blue to purple to yellow to vivid green and then all-consuming white.

The white thoroughly replaced the black serenity around her and filled her with chaos. The incidences of past flashed in front of her eyes with the hues of lightening. Her mother, her childhood, her school life, her adulthood, her first meet with Aryaman, and then the last few days flashed with flashes of red in her mind.
Her screams, her begging, her pain, and the kindness of darkness as it consumed her and took her away from a world of pain and suffering.

And all she can feel now was the rage of red. Falling on her foes like a brilliantly white supercharged lightning and destroy them in one quick yet painful move. She could feel it. She could do it.

And then the anger discharged and despair loaded. The shades of grey and icy blue griping her filling her with cold and gloom. She stood at the center of a hurricane now, watching the destruction, watching death, and feeling the after-effects.

Was it necessary? Her soul screamed and she was again in the pitch black serenity with a hurricane trapped inside her, crashing violently against her skin and making a ruckus so loud that it tuned out everything. Everything but the song of two different birds mixed together creating a strange harmony and drowning out everything.

She couldn't hear anything but the sound of the birds and hurricane mixing with each other and becoming one. Hurricane, birds, and blood. She could feel it. Smell it. Tell it apart.

And suddenly it all stopped. She was definitely trapped in hell and slowly going mad. She decided firmly. Nothing else explained this strange phenomenon. She is dead and going mad. She decided sullenly as the chaos of symphony surrounding her merged into stillness. Silence.