House of Ashes [Complete]

23. Too late | بہت دیر

Tossing and turning in her bed, she couldn't sleep at all, her mind constantly being nagged by the hodgepodge of thoughts, Ayyan's being the top one as it stifled the others.

Stretching her arms, she drew the drapes and let the soft breeze brandish her sleep sunken face. She was a living robot as of now, running on caffeine only.

As she clamped her mouth to muffle a yawn, her gaze fell on a figure digging something up besides the plant: mud. She found it amusing. Mr. CEO playing the gardener was a sight to behold.

Retiring down the stairs, she maneuvered her way towards the garden. The aroma of beautiful manicured lush green grass and hunter leaves lingering in the air as it wafted through her nostrils like an ointment to her bruises. Everything was so serene.

"I didn't know you were a gardener, too."
She smirked.

Engrosssed in the plants, he turned his head around to look at her and then got back in his business.

"Yes, I believe a human should know everything."
He put seeds in the hole he had dug up.

"Everything?"
She raised a perfect eyebrow.

"Yes. Just a bit if not whole. You know, just a know how."
He glanced at her as he put the mud on the seeds.
"So in case if you land yourself in some sort of a problem, you'd at least know how to figure your way around it."

"Hmm."
She pouted, mulling over his words. Maybe, he wasn't as much stupid as she had thought he was.

"Besides, if it weren't for plants, you wouldn't be alive, right now. So there's that."

"I hardly believe that this plant of yours is keeping me alive which, by the way, hasn't even grown yet."
She said before her lips graced the rim of the coffee cup.

"Well, hello there!" He gestured towards the extended garden plenished with plants and trees as he stood up.

"Yeah, alight."
She rolled her eyes.

"Anyways, ready to go?"
He asked, putting all the gardening stuff in the bag.

She nodded.

"Alright, I'll be back in few."
His face devoid of any expression whatsoever.

******

The melancholy still hadn't left her side as they rode towards the hospital. The ride was spent in utter silence. None of them tried to make a conversation. None of them wanted to either. But the calm that was ensued in that silence was something so absurd. So abnormal. Because who were Safa Hayat and Azlan Shehryar without bickering? Strange, how some people, some situations, can let you forget your problems when it comes to them. How they can make you realize that there are far bigger things in the world that need more importance.

"Strange!"
She muttered to herself in trance in merely a whisper but it didn't surpass his ears.

"Huh?"
He turned his head around a bit, his aviators fixed on his neatly trimmed stubbled cheekbones.

"What?"

"You just said something?"
He focused his eyes back on the road ahead.