Fingers in symphony

A short novella- Part 3 of 5

The seagulls tore through her morning dream.

They flew in, uninvited, breaching the delicate veil between sleep and waking, their wings rustling the edges of her slumber. In the dream, they flew into her room, piercing the darkness, and lifted her gently in their wings, as though she were weightless. The sudden lift jolted her. She woke with a start, her breath catching.

Beside her, Shanti’s bolster startled her, out of place, almost surreal.
The woodpecker printed on it with its blue eyes and red beak stared back at her clashing with the all white aesthetic. Shanti had always been like that: a riot of color in Nethra’s carefully curated life.
She was the life Nethra had been searching for in all the men she’d dated before Shanti reentered her life.

In school, they were galaxies apart.
Nethra had been one of the popular girls, not just among the students but with teachers too. A basketball champion; a debate circuit prodigy. Head of her house and the undisputed class diplomat, known to dexterously bargain extra leaves before unit tests or squeeze out surprise holidays.
Shanti, true to her name then, a quiet dot in the margins of Nethra’s vast, glittering world.

They’d spoken only on occasion, when Nethra’s essays for the school magazine (edited by Shanti) needed trimming, or when her starring role in the annual Shakespeare production required a touch of assistant direction.

So when, years later, Nethra spotted Shanti alone at a dimly lit bistro, in the middle of a bland date-she almost yelled with relief.

She excused herself confidently and made her way across the room, heart oddly pounding.

“Hi, Shanti. Remember me?” she offered, with a zealous grin.

Shanti squinted. “Hi… erm, Nethra from High Valley?” Then, a spark. “Oh my god, it’s been so long!” she laughed, raising her voice over the thumping music.

“Hope I’m not interrupting. Such a small world. Can I borrow you for a bit? It’s so loud in here.”

“Interrupting what? I’m here alone,” Shanti shrugged. “Come, let’s head to the rooftop. I need a smoke.”

That smoke break turned into a full-blown conversation that unfurled over ninety uninterrupted minutes.

Time, for once, obeyed them. They spoke with the familiarity of kindred spirits and the hesitation of near-strangers rediscovering something they didn’t know they’d lost.

Shanti had just returned to the city, freshly divorced, bruised but breathing. Nethra, meanwhile, had only recently begun unpeeling the layers of her own identity, finally accepting the desires she had once cast aside as inconvenient.

It took another year for Nethra to admit, to herself, to Shanti, to the mirror, that she was wildly, impossibly in love.
Another year before they moved in together.

Her mother, unexpectedly, had become their fiercest ally-a quiet wall of resistance against nosy relatives and curious neighbors.
They shared four extraordinary years.
Years etched in the small rituals of domesticity and the beatitude of everyday love.

Now, as Nethra stirred from the same dream again, the pillow, once Shanti’s, was all that remained. The only fragment she had taken from the ruins of the home they built.

But last night’s meeting lit a flicker of hope.

A quiet promise that perhaps, someday, they might co-create a world where love wasn’t hidden behind doors, where no one had to explain the language of their desire.

A world where people, once again, could live and love freely.