Amaranthine Odes | ONC 2022

◻Chapter 11◻✔️

◻Murmurs of Mirth◻

With the settling tides, I rise. With happy dawns, I shine. When the clouds of darkness surround you, I become your treasure, but why do you lose me in the array of pain?
~HAPPINESS.
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"Ayya."

She shook his elbows with all her strength, but he sat there, akin to a sore kitten caught in its own mess.

"Ayah. Ayah!"

She waved her fingers in front of his fixated eyes, perching the sunbathing canopies sheltering their roof. To her scare, he didn't recognize anything. With no delay, she poured some water on her wrinkled palms to splash it on his face.

"What the-"

He swallowed the raw phrases as he looked at the alarming face stooping in front of him.

"Ayya! Kutty-"

He signaled her to communicate quietly by placing his index finger upon his pouted lips.

"Oh, seri, seri." She muffled her syllables one by one. Her hands counted something to show eight fingers, making him shrug his shoulders.

"Ettu. Ettu nimisham!" Her whispers made him look vague at her popping sockets as her lids repelled with her hands moving towards him.

She then hit her palm on her forehead and then showed a thumbs-up sign. Shaking them to the sides, she again showed eight fingers, making him recollect something he had forgotten with the tide of time.

Shit! Shit! Shit! How did I not track it?

He quickly gathered the scattered bundles and the slipped lighter that landed beside his foot. Arranging the leaves, he accidentally pressed the lever and ended up burning some leaves of the ferns.

Too clumsy to even do a small chore!

He muttered some profanities while his riotous thoughts oriented to light the incense. As instructed, he signaled the lady to wait outside while he held the ferns to cover the odor from the front.

"Man, this is too musty!"

Ghrook. Hrook Argrhm ahm.

Groans of cough made him compress his throat and run inside the room to execute his commitments.

Argh! Too nefarious!

He kept the bundle near his chest that tightened with not-exhaled breaths. The darkness was too hideous, but his quick-paced strides were organized. Upon his ten strides, the stench of metallic raw blood and salty sweat clouded the odd silence waddling in his nerves.

Should I...

Before he could conclude, his eyes found two arches stilled, something laid on the floor. He inclined his head to glimpse through the snaking smoke only to gawk at what his eyes saw.

Hari Hara!

His jumbled steps tripped him twice, but it couldn't stop his verve from thriving to do all his might. He knelt as he was startled by the rigidly bowed spines and sloping arms of his sister and the stranger. In a moment, he tried to flatten it with his hardened hands, rolling the incense and ferns to the sides. But to his shock, he couldn't even move them down, not even an inch.

"What the heck is happening!"

He nipped their skin and whisked them, but they lay hushed, with their chest rushing to rise and fall deeper than before.