A Romantic Vision

Like the Boy

Half of the same month Expired like a light flash, the summer flowered wild berries in the garden. I never opened the door to my room. I must admit I was not as sad or perhaps all those emotions expired with him that day. I did not smile as well, it was a most unthinkable facet of the new beginning.

"You seem so pale, love" my mother inspected the cinnabar circles around my eyes "you do not even water the flowers, all of the lilies are near their death"

The lilies are dying...

"nobody looks after them?" I enquired, her hands still over face tracing all the cold scars.

"I haven't seen that boy since his Uncle has moved in, he was a good gardener, wasn't he?" she gazed through me. But what was there to be detected?

I watched day after day the lilies moving to a slow dull and desperate death, something about it satisfied me, something at least was free of life. The lilies Awan left with me rotted and decayed in my book.

I smiled as tears welled up, silly boy.....

A sudden waft and mild chatterings sneaked into my room. I grew agitated again. As I pulled the rim of the curtain, Awan's little blue door had guests.

Unexpectedly yet violently I was overwhelmed, was Awan getting married?

Without a warning almost as automatic as a machine, I ran with no conscious. Try my luck the last time.

I rushed mad and shaking to his door. He opened with such a blissful demeanour that it ached the very niche of my soul.

His smiled disappeared and he took me by arm to the backside of his garden.

His lilies we're alive, rather healthy.

"Miss... How are you ?" he smiled, I should stop reading his unsaid passions.

"do you love me?" I simply asked.

The sky delivered a soft ray of sunlight, there was warmth but I was burning, the delicate whiff of the freshly watered earth and the white as milk lilies all paid homage to my broken heart. Oh, how I wish he would take me into his arm and we would disappear from this world into an unknown library of a strange individual into whose home we would break into, to read his diary and I hoped he would read those passages to me forever till the day we meet our lord again and I would tell him how grateful I am for the miracle he did this day....this day...

This day Awan was as quiet as I was. Like he was silently praying like I was.
My hand was in his, hover, some bounty over this destiny had yet to be uplifted. I waited for his reply but this ghost of mourning possessed the very life within Awan. He rubbed his arm with his one hand.

"do you not speak because you don't want to break my heart or there is something else you would want to say," I asked after the stillness had enacted.

" I do not speak because I do not want to break my heart" he left my hand free, I bowed to meet his low stature, his shrunken shoulders, his tearing eyes. He comprehends me.

"Why are you doing this...what is the matter, Awan! For god's sake will you speak Awan!" I sat on the ground. He fell beside naturally.

"If I do not marry her, I would not acquire Maerifa Miss if there is anything I love more than you than it is the place my father dreamed of" he narrated "my uncle would never sign off the papers to me until I marry his daughter. He loaned my father some money over the estate. I want it so badly Miss I cannot comprehend what I would do without it"

I thought over his crisis. "what if I would ask my father to buy it for you" I suggested with ease and I was glad I found the antidote.
He laughed "your father does not incorporate what uncle has, I want much more than Muntaha Miss, I want the unfinished dream of my father to reach it's furnished finale, I want the money and aids and all the things that would make me labour the highest literary castle of his dream. Miss, more than anything I don't want you... I don't see you fit to be in the wrenching years of despair and anguish" the grief-struck inside like the first axe upon a living tree. He held my shoulder to face him "you weaken me, Miss. I shall never be able to steer the journey I want to commence. I can only console you"

I nudged away from him, my feet cold and the warmth abruptly flung away. In two metres was the way out of this house but I could not walk to it. He is choosing money over me. Or his dreams....everything was clear as water but so muddy was the water that it is dirty to put it to words.

I walked shamefully from his house as I always do for some reason. His place humiliates me.
Was my father always right about people like Awan, the little minds of little people?.

I washed my face with water and as clear as water but one cannot see through it perhaps because it hurts too much to see things for what they are.

I dined with my parents and I looked them dead in the eye, "I want to be married"
I might have taken a plunge or perhaps lost my mind.
"mother, would you marry me to whom I please?"

There was a silence in which even the breaths take caution. Mother stood up and held my face, she tucked my hair behind my ears, she was consoling but I hate to be consoled...

"Mother marry me before this weekend " I gasped but mere words cut to the speeding tears.

"are you alright Laraib, are you..?" she cried "please" I sobbed at her hands "please I want to be done and away with this mayhem!"

"oh love please do not ask me to marry you to that village boy...oh that is a servant boy for God sake Laraib I hope you are not talking about--"
I held her in her words " Timur...marry me to Timur" I took from her the remains of the breath I could not breathe.

My father jerked back onto his chair and the very ghost that had endorsed the face of Awan now possessed my parents.

We must find strengths and not weaknesses, I learned appropriately that day.

For fair reasons, each of us in the room did not speak that day.

The following days there was no discussion but a strange cessation in the house. It was not until one day after lunch when Mrs Kasheefa eavesdropped that the village boy has married his Uncles daughter and was now the sole heir of the entire estate beyond the marking of our boundary. I smirked at the success of the village boy and at how sophisticated he would now look, some money to match the humour.

Mother had no interest in the gossip, she hushed her to the kitchen to mind her own business. I watch out to the other mansion, the lilies shine bright as diamonds in the evening, the house rattling and glowing with chatter and glittery clothes of the guests. I smiled and smiled like the boy I once Knew.