A Court's Maim

گواہ | Witness

Chapter 25.

There was a beauty in the nature of defiance. It was almost sultry — the essential realizations of learning to retreat on your stances. To stand your ground, but forfeit when your heart needed it most. Even with the backdrop of a terrible heartache that could match the blood of the self proclaimed martyrs, whose tongues were in a battle to taint. One had to survive. In all their glory and perfection, designer shades and heels, stopping was not important. Being linear in mindset was unacceptable. In a world of ruthless tempers and the very need to destroy, self destruction was an ancient art. Abandoned for good reason.

Monday — a day before the perhaps most publicized court hearing, came with a buzz. It tinted the rosy grounds of the estate a champagne. The deafening pain of the frosty morning in Lahore, stifling sight and keeping at an arm's distance from growth, it was horrendous. A squeamish wetness placed itself in the centre of the town, spreading through the cemented roads in all their dreary glory. Horns sprung every now and then from corners unknown.
The city was alive.
The city was livid.
The city was aching.
Through its beating veins and the large spread of it's streets, a van turned into the luxurious doors. Enveloped into the trees shadows as it rolled in.

Picking up pieces of her life as if they were fragments of a looking glass, shattered into pieces from reckless authority. Tracing the edges that slipped past her hands, over and over again. Until the tips of her hands and memorised the crooks. Dipped in a silver, they left behind marks on to her palms. Glistening in the lights of the dimmed sun, a curtain of white placed between her and it, there was a shift in authority. Where she took it by the throat, and split it into two halves of a quartered whole. Desires that had for an eternity at most, driven her passions were suddenly denied entrance into her brain. The need to not loose a winning streak — failed to match the want of saving an innocent man. It was time. For the deliriousness of her shattered illusions to paint a whole truth.

Effortless and sultry the usual ringlets that her hair sat in had been ditched for the day. They provided comfort under his starved gaze but no longer was there feelings lingering under the gelled mass. Instead, soft waves replaced them and pressed against her bony shoulders in a way life's waves had rattled against them for a long time. A bit more still to come. Clipped the nude nails, a shade too off from a tea pink, and a bit too dark for plain beige. Sweaty the palms filled those of her brother's and the claret lost to them held a change. As the season's moved on, so did their choices. Underneath the translucent glass their hands held each other, squeezing hers in assurance.

Twirling her free wrist into the matchless tempers of the lounge, she wrapped a piece of hair behind her ears. Scratching the bottom of her lobe, twirling the thin diamonds that hung from them. Gnawing on to her bottom lip, the toes of her lengthy heels fighting the urge to kick the camera's tripod. Dressed in a subtle ivory — one that matched the innocence of the murderer, the harshness had been ditched. A far-cry from the woman that sat before them with burning mocha eyes and a devout tongue. A first ; a siren shifting to a saint to save one. Not the last to do so. When a love so great was at stake. Webbing together the organza veil that was discarded over her shoulder, it's red embroidery matching the threads of her shirt.

Good and evil.
Angels and devils.
Saints and sirens.
Whites and reds.
They were not without the other. It had hit her chest like a fast out of control truck. The gravity of her feelings for him. Underneath the stuffy duvet, her hands touched the cold spot left behind by his absence. Her fingers strayed — tears of anguish had found a home as they pooled down her cheeks. It was lonesome, harsher than the pain of anything that had ever occurred to her. Last night as the sky turned starry and she talked to the dipper, murmuring words of broken heartedness to the white moon basking in an after glow, Barekhna had realised.
Too much too late.
Breathless, wheezing over the frozen balcony, feeling the cold form bumps over her skin, Barekhna had found out. Answers to questions.