Blue ✓

♠ three ♠

It was strange being in darkness at all times. It's been a month, yet she still expected to see light upon opening her eyes in the morning. The unwelcome darkness made her heart drop a metre further down each day.

"This is how blind people deal with every day. I've been blessed with sight at least for a part of my life," she mused to herself, unable to really class herself as blind. She's been blessed with the view of this beautiful world, if only for fifteen years – but those born in the darkness had not even that. She can call upon her memory to supply her with images, but they'd never had that.

She knew red, blue, light, tree, the sun, rain, snow, people, animals, birds, insects and other myriad of things – how they looked, but those born blind didn't.

It made her appreciate what she had always taken for granted, and lament that she hadn't spent that extra moment to carve those sights into her memory until it couldn't be wiped out.

Yet, her heart was unable to accept the permanent darkness and adjust to it. A week after her initial surgery – the one that cleaned up the glass and blood – she had cried in her mother's lap until there was nothing else her eyes could squeeze out.

When Ammi told her, 'Allah never takes anything away from you without replacing it in its likeness or something better. You may have lost your physical sight, my darling, but listen carefully and open up your heart and a whole new world will welcome you. You have the chance to experience something that is experienced by the beloveds of Allah – seeing with your heart.'

She doesn't understand it. The darkness is suffocating her, she can't breathe. How can she open up her mind when it is against her?

She heard the door open followed by the cheerful voice of one of the nurses assigned to her. Sophie? Maya? Riha? She could never tell the differences in their voices, no matter how many times they introduced themselves to her. It all sounded the same to her ears.

"We're going the common room today, yes?"

When she had been placed in this room after the surgery, the nurses always tried to cheer her up by offering to take her to the common room. Saying there were entertainments there; tv, radio, PlayStation, books, board games. She never paid heed to it, always politely turning the offer down. How could it be entertainment if she couldn't even see it?

It was fine the first week, she was adjusting to her new state, brooding and crying in Ammi's lap and sleeping the pain away. Second week, Suhayl had taken it upon himself to help her finish reading the Harry Potter series, she had already read till The Goblet of Fire. This carried into the third week. But Suhayl had his SATs preps to do, and she didn't want to keep him from getting the best grades possible. Finally, she agreed. Being in the same place twenty-four-seven – even if she couldn't see it – took a toll on her mind. It was stifling.

The nurse – Sophie? Maya? Riha? – was naturally ecstatic.

"Come on," she helped Aiyla out of the bed and fixed her scarf. Her voice – still painfully cheerful – chattered on about nonsense that Aiyla's mind could not keep up with. As they exited the room, Aiyla slowly and carefully being guided by the nurse, she stopped.

Aiyla paused, confused at the silence.

"And there's a someone special I wanted you to meet." She added softly.

Aiyla's interest piqued at that, she'd always heard the painfully cheerful tone from the nurse, never this soft, loving pitch.

'Noisy' was the first thought in Aiyla's head as they entered the common room, followed by 'homely'. She'd been surrounded by a disciplined silence, soft voices, and mechanical sounds of machines for the past three weeks. Here, there was a cacophony of sounds; mutterings, radio, talk-show on a tv, click-clack of a board game, and rustling of paper. It all came together to create this homely feeling she didn't know she had missed.