From The Quill

The darkness danced around me, Silhouettes of ghosts of the past Appeared as a form of regret Shattering me within. And I embrace it with grace For in its intoxicated presence I could see You near me. I weren't I yet You were You. We talked, we danced, we recited poems We dreamt that things weren't the same; Until the evening sky gave way to morning gloom And you faded just like the crescent moon And now I have to wait for tonight To see you again. - Suranya

He was struggling with his first letter to her. He had strangely written thousands of letters before. To his mother. To his seniors and subordinates. No letter left him in loss of words like it did today. What could be written to her? He had promised to write in an impulse. For when he was leaving for the battlefield the day after marrying her, maybe because he had seen it in her eyes. Tears held back. Worries concealed with a smile. And a sense of loneliness, A sense of getting lost in a palace full of unknown people. Truth be said, he didn't know what to tell his new bride. But what he did was to assure that he would write to her. For the first time, the sleepless night made him sit with a pen and paper and scribble. He had never paid heed to his words or letters before. They usually talked of politics and his well-being. But she... She was like a poem to his heart. Gentle, Deep. And mysterious. Reading between the lines was not easy when it came to her. He had wondered at times ...

The child who promised his mother he would be home soon, the woman whose aged parents were waiting for her return, the activist whose wife had pleaded with him not to go that morning, the clueless merrymakers roaming the gardens; people. Old, young, clueless, unnamed. They didn't deserve it. Yet here we are, a hundred years later, still comprehending thousands of massacres, thousands of deaths, and several families destroyed. For the borders. For the ego of a nation that thought the sun never set on them. For humanity's loop of violence. Suranya.

Sometimes in the darkest nights, under the bright veil of stars, a dim lamp shone in the room of the gem-studded marble palace. While the Palace slept in silence, no one noticed the gems on the walls, designed to be trees, flowers and shrubs, shine in the light of the lamp like the trees of heaven. It is then that the magic worked in her heart. She would stare at them and imagine how slowly, in the flickering light, they seemed to come alive one by one, swaying in the breeze gently around her. The flowers smelled of a mixture of jasmine, tuberose, and tulips. The shrubs whispered in the wind. In the palace of stones. The imagination made a garden of Eden for the Princess. She sat in a throne under the open sky, surrounded by flowers, forming a canopy over her head. The walls around her, the cold white marble, seemed to have fallen as the wind brought the freshness of the open gardens with it. Once again, the Captive Princess felt free of her chains. Her chains of reality. Somewhere far...