Tyaag

५

The silver moon had her blood stains on it.

The wolf carried her torn flesh to the heavens, tossing her eyes, her breast, her bones as an offering to the hungry crowd that lunged from beneath.

Then, took whatever pieces were left, to mark the sky with the crimson color of her death.

The ichor of grieving gods fell from their eyes, rolling down their hollowed out cheeks, collapsing on to the ever greedy, ever parched ground that takes more than it gives.

The claret raindrops fell into an eternal slumber as soon as the grass yielded, hungry as it was to embrace the nectar of the dead and the ruined.

The birth of another cloudburst, just as warm and eager as the one before it, came into being, summoned by the imbrued earth that never stopped asking for more.

And so, the vicious wheel kept spinning until everything was flooded with blood.

Her blood spilling in the cerulean seas. Her blood cascading from the ivory clouds. Her blood on Yuvraj's lips. Her blood dripping from the mouth of the beast.

His teeth gnawing at her beating heart until her body turned into a grave, holding nothing but the rotting remains of all that she was supposed to be.

Meera woke up to the wailing of the seven skies echoing in her ears.

Her pulse throbbed underneath her flesh, an apparatus of life reminding her that she was alive, that she hadn't turned into a corpse overnight, that there was no beast tearing her apart nor there was a famished crowd wanting to drink her blood.

The roaring thunder that palpated in the crux of the heavens above was nothing when compared to the erratic beating of her heart.

Like a clenched fist thrashing on the walls of her chest, louder than the mouthpiece of doom, than the pounding of a war drum, it kept on booming as if to let the gods know of its defying existence.

Meera tried to get air into her lungs and it felt like she was borrowing her own breaths back from the grasp of someone who had stolen them away from her when she slept.

The eerie cold breeze, sneaked inside of her room from the small window and caressed her skin with it's icy finger tips, reminding her of the beast, his bloodied teeth and how they grazed over her flesh with wicked appetency.

Meera shivered and in an attempt to gain focus, rubbed her sweaty palms over the fabric of her skirt.

She tried to blink the gory haze away from her mind, telling herself it was a nightmare and nightmares don't come true unless...

The window creaked as if to beckon her closer, to tell her that it was okay for her to take a peek.

She rushed to take a glance at the sky and sighed in relief as she realized that dawn hadn't arrived yet and so her nightmare would remain only that, a horrid dream confined to the dark corners of her mind that would never turn into reality.

Not that any dreams ever did.

She wondered briefly if the wailing she heard in her dream was that of the storm raging outside.

She was about to shut the small window, to ward off the howling of the winds that made her mind conjure up grisly images that kept flashing behind her eyelids even after waking up, but a vague movement born out of a strange shadow that didn't belong to the rain stopped her.

She narrowed her eyes to see past the veil of darkness the storm had covered the unpaved streets in front of her small house with, and could barely make out the outline of a quiver on the back of the inconspicuous man whose peculiar silhouette seemed familiar.