Your Call in Spring

Preface

"We will meet again."

"You can't expect me to be back from Dubai in a jiffy."

"England has been your home, Ina'ara."

"Matthew, no promises."

"It's the end of spring. My first summer without you."

"Don't talk cheesy, we've been childhood friends. Don't make me want to hit you."

"Hit with flowers and roses?"

"Say, better with thorns and bushes."

A warm pleasing breeze swept through the two, seated beneath the grandfather oak tree, rustling the mature leaves on mighty stems.

"You will return, right?"

She collected her books off the checkered mat, completely ignoring his question. Teeth bit on the lower lip.

"Ina'ara, please."

She sighed and stood facing him who was anxiously, looking up from where he sat.
Her blue bell eyes and soft face looked hesitant to say, roaming on the grass near her.

"Matthew, I don't know when I will return from Dubai. Neither I know how long we would stay there nor do I know if we'll visit home back in Pakistan. So, no promises."

"You do know how to write a letter, don't you?"

His expressions never changed, his green eyes transfixed at her since the start.

She stood silent and confused.

"Every once in a while, send me a letter. You can promise that."

The little dust and stalks of grass stuck to his jeans, which he brushed of when as he stood. Cream brown mullet of his matched to that of hues of sunlight, when sunset behind the oak gave a mesmerising caramel brown diffraction.

"Matthew...."

"Or more easy," he made a direct contact with her, hands in his pockets.

"Send me a letter, when spring starts. When you feel like it."

Her look made her anxious rather uneasy.
But she neither nodded, nor shook in denial.

And like that she turned to her path in steady steps, boot crumpling the green evening grass. She didn't turn back. She didn't say any goodbyes.

Not a single goodbye....

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"That only meant, you were never leaving. And I believe it to be that way, even now."

He brought his gaze back to the street, glistened with fresh snow of early winters. Bearable. His boots crunched gravel as he took steps towards the Eden roads.

"Three years, Ina'ara. I wait every spring to come, for you."

Now his eyes wandered in thoughts and anguish. Force on the gravel increased with pace.

"Friends? Is this how you say?"

Poor pebble gets hit mercilessly by his kick. Anger and sorrow in him was showing.

"But who's to hurt?"

Several kicks and the pebble hopped down the sewage drain. The man halted with his hands in his winter coat.

"Me. Me, it is, " his voice feeble.

He would again recall the moment and moisten up the eyes again. Not a single tear dropped.

"I'm hoping, Ina'ara. Don't break this trust."

Even the sigh became clouds of moisture as the weather worsened cold. Fire in him was keeping him warm. Fire of hope and belief.

"You need time, I'll give you plenty. I watched three springs without you, another won't hurt."

He looked just once at the sky shedding flakes of snow as the stars twinkled bravely through the clouds.

He smiled and pulled on his hood and started to walk home to Edenshire.