Each step she took moving away from him, she felt one more bit of her heart shatter. But she had to do it. She had to move away before hearing from him how he loved another. She had to move away before hearing from him he could and would never reciprocate her feelings. She had to break herself now before he would break her completely, so much so that she wouldn't be able to build herself back again.
A jolt to her happy world had come when she was 12. It hadn't just been a small jolt. It had been a complete apocalypse that had hit her world, reducing it to minismal, trivial remnants. Her life of years had transformed abruptly into something she hadn't even in her wildest dreams thought it would! After all, nobody would have expected to come to know one day that the world they have lived in for years isn't reality but a web of illusions woven to put up a so-called perfect picture infront of the society! This in its entirety had left an invisible but deep scar on her soul, which was to stay for life.
The second jolt had been when she was 18 years old. When afloat on a drowning surface amidst the storms (symbolic of her circumstances then) engulfing her being when she was swaying from sanity to daze and extreme luminosity to impenetrable tenebrosity, her only anchor had been her best friend. She had held her together and brought her out of the chaotic depths she was engulfed in. Rishita had been her sanity. But that fateful day when she saw her hanging from the roof of their room, a noose tightened around her neck, she had felt her soul abandon her body for a whole moment. Lifelessly she had stood, blankly watching her dead form, till she ultimately collapsed on the floor. 3 years from that day had been spent in psychiatric care for her recurrent nightmares and deep trauma, after which she had left that place to start afresh.
That was when she had met him! And now, just a month after spending time with him and realising she loved him, she was walking away from him because she dint have it in her to bear another rejection.
"Raavi '' he called out, something so chasmal and compelling in his voice that her legs refused to walk any further even as she stilled at her spot. She turned towards him, her body seemingly under a magical spell as it heeded to him much against her own resolve.
"Come here, come to me Raavi!" he called out, his arms outstretched and a smile lighting his face, his eyes filled with warmth.
Her eyes widened and filled with tears at the same instant. She shook her head in a no. His smile disappeared even as tears rolled down his eyes and he took a step back making her heart clench in her chest.
"Shiva" she called out, her voice shaking with pain and moved towards him.
He kept moving back even as she kept moving towards him. Their eyes held each other's gaze. Both were in tears and their steps hadn't halted.
She kept moving towards him not realising that she had reached near the edge of the terrace. Her steps dint stall even as she kept moving, as if in a daze, her entire focus only on him, ultimately reaching the edge of the terrace. And that was that - the end!
A/N
This might look incomplete and might be confusing, which is exactly what I want the readers to feel. There is a backstory to this of course. But I feel this is better left this way. All of you are welcome to share your interpretations and ideas about this. Do share your views. The title is a really big clue. And you'd surely have noticed he is underlined everywhere. Let's see what you all can make out of it.
Love,
PSR
PS: This was actually a three shot written on another couple. But I reduced it and made this version which shall be original to Shivi.
Pocket Mein Aasman
Cricket
Ganesh Kartikeya
Shiv Shakti
