Stars | completed

50. A Wish Upon The Stars

Nandini's PoV:

When I first shifted from Mangalore to Mumbai years ago, I didn't know that it was going to be the beginning of a story. I was nervous when I walked down the hallways of Space Academy waiting for my best friend to show up and introduce me to a bunch of strangers, but as days passed into weeks and pages of my story flipped along, those same strangers became people my life started revolving around. Of course, there were ups and there were downs. There were chapters that made me believe I was living a fairytale and there were chapters that made it all seem like a very tragic nightmare; but in the end, even with the good parts and the bad, it was just another story. And like every other book ever written, this story was yet to have a finite end.

However, I think what made this entire story special was that I always found myself in the middle of it. Every single time that I thought I was ready to end it all on a happy note, something happened and I was right there again: in the middle of the story.

Maybe because I was desperate to end it where it shouldn't end. You can't shut a book in the middle of the story and believe it's ended just because you reached a point you'd rather end it at then read until the end and unleash another tragedy. That's not how it works.

You have to go through every dialogue, every sentence, every page, every chapter until you reach it's very end.

And we did that.

We lived through the chapters. We lived through the tragedies and the happiness. We lived through the parts that seemed out of a fairytale, and the parts that seemed like our personalised nightmares.

And all of it- every thing we have been through, individually and together, it all brings us here:

To the final chapter of my story, waiting to be unfolded.

*      *

Leaving my slippers on the polished floors, I walked barefoot on the sand and towards the water, and stood where the tides only touched my toes before receding, leaving a tingling sensation behind. I watched in awe at the sun almost rising above the horizon, the sky painted in the last splatters of a very dark blue mingling with the lighter azure colour of the upcoming morning. The wind pleasantly gusted past me, making my hair flow across my shoulders freely into a tangled mess as I inhaled the scent of salt that lingered in an ocean breeze, and it oddly calmed my nerves, which was a lot more than I expected, considering the hell that could rain upon us soon.

"You now see why this is my favourite part of the farmhouse, don't you?"

Opening my eyes, I half turned to see Manik, standing a few feet away from me with his hands dug into his pocket. "I do."

And then, I turn with a half smile. "You went to get yourself a drink just a minute ago. Back so soon?"

"You can't blame me for being careful," he raised his shoulders, his eyes lifting off me and fixing on the scenic beauty ahead instead. "It's been only hours Aliya was taken away, right from our eyes and there was nothing we could do."

I gulp, "It's been some hours now." Only because I was calm didn't mean I was not keeping account of every minute that passed without her. The first few had been miserable. Aryamman had completely panicked, hastily running over and over the maze to find something, anything... but it was all empty. We had then all relocated ourselves to Manik and Zubin's farmhouse. Sticking together seemed like the best way to get through. Waiting was torture but we had to wait for the sun to rise. Sleep felt like a hard pill to swallow, and so we decided to wait through for the morning before having to take things in our own hands. And now, anytime now, we were about to dive into danger bare handed.