That night, I analyzed the patterns on my room ceiling like never before, like they'd been stranger to me all along. The curls, the swirls, the delicately laced designs—had I ever really seen any of it before? I don't know.

Sleep was stranger to me, even when I invited it in like a long-lost friend. But it refused any connection to me, and I craved for the solace that came with it through the night and right up to the first few rays of the sun peeking out. I tossed and turned in relentless motions, my bones weary for rest and my heart an instability in my ribcage, my chest a mound of disturbances.

They say eyes are the window to the soul, but that night, how I wished you'd just shut the damn curtains.

And truthfully so, I had no idea this was just the first night of many more to come.

There were times in my life I absolutely despised Amani's energy. We were like two ends of a spectrum—at times when hers was full to the brim, oozing out of her, mine resembled a barren desert. Dry and flaky. And today, to my luck, was another day where I resided on the drier end of it.

"You had a nice night," I guessed as I slid into the only other chair on our kitchen table. Amani was at the stove, stirring a spoon in a pot.

"He was a gentleman. He was perfect. Beauti—"

"We get the point," I held up a hand. "I don't need you to vomit a whole thesaurus on me."

"Such a drab you are," Amani grumbled, throwing her handkerchief at me. I squirmed until it landed on the floor. Her snot was not what I needed right now. "Be happy for me."

"As if it's that easy to be happy about something that gives me zero excitement." I turned in my seat. "What took you so long? I was awake for hours."

"Baby boo missed me?" Amani cooed, and I threw her snotty napkin back at her. She laughed and turned her gaze back to the simmering pot.

"You forgot to change my diaper last night. I had to sit in a puddle of my loneliness and misery the whole time."

"You cross the lines of tolerable disgust."

"I love to mirror you."

Amani turned down the flame of the stove and encircled her arms around my shoulders. The love I had for this girl bloomed tenfold.

"I love you, Jannat."

"I love me too," I smiled, and she placed a big wet and sloppy kiss on my cheek.

"Ask me how the date went," Amani squealed, as she emptied the contents of the pot into a large mug and took a seat at the table. "Come on, ask me."

I stabbed my bread with my fork. "How did the date go?"

"On a beautiful Pegasus carriage to heaven," Jannat sighed, her pea-sized eyes quite literally taking the shape of hearts. Pink, glittery and sparkly, nauseating hearts. "We had this extravagant dinner at the Halls and then rode horses through his farmhouse."

"He has a farmhouse?" That was new.

"Bigger and far more extravagant than ours, Jannat. Hay bales so orderly and stables so spotless, I didn't know how to bring up our own before him."

"Why would you say that?" I questioned, eyebrows creased. "Amani, we dreamt of moving to the countryside and living this life, the one we're living right now. It's not perfect, but it is ours and that should be enough."

"He has people looking after his animals. He has all these extravagant carriages outside his farms, bags of cattle food we'd never be able to get our hands on even if we sold bread the rest of our lives. He has—"

"Fine, then just go marry him, dammit." I pushed my chair back from the table and stood up, the chair scraping against the floor but I could care less about Amani's handiwork with the furniture.

"Stop being so jealous."

"The only thing either of us is being right now is really superficial, and I'm telling you, it's not me, it's you."

"Yes, we spun dreams of this life, and now we've it, there's no harm in aspiring for more."

I stopped dead in my tracks. "A matrimony."

Amani breathed a sigh. The room was heavy with silence. I could hear my heart sink. Down the surface, deeper and deeper until it graced the floor.

"You want to marry him," I continued. "Do you?"

"I..." Amani looked away. "What made you think that?"

"You. You love his appearances, you love his extravagance, his luxury, his monetary benefits—"

"And the absolute amazing person he is within," Amani whispered. "Jannat, can you listen to me, please? For a few minutes?"

The fire in me ignited, but I nodded nevertheless.

"He has lived all his life sheltered away, made to believe he is an honor that needs to be protected. That he's the golden heir, the legacy of his father's clan. He has burdens on his shoulders that weigh him down in the most relentless manner. Why do you think he won't let bulky men accompany him everywhere he goes? Because he wants to live life like us—commoners—he wants a taste of the freedom we have as an everyday meal."

I turned my head away. "Then why did he have to make such a show of his wealth before you?"

"Because it is his own. Not his father's. If it were ever to come up in a crowd, he'd be the sole being to whom credit is due. Not the Magistrate. Not his ancestors. Him himself."

I eyed Amani. "What are your reasons?"

I didn't fail to notice the way her eyes glowed like the stars on the darkest, blackest night. What happened to the Amani I knew?

"I feel like this can go somewhere," Amani whispered. "And Jannat, will you answer a query of mine? Honest honesty?"

I played with the edge of my shirt. "Honest honesty."

"Can you tell me why this guy who was with Durrab yesterday—Elaf—asked me about you?"

***

You, Elaf Asfour—as I had been told by Amani—were a traveler.

Your heart never found residency in one place. A tenant who scurried through cities, leisurer who changed lodgings like I changed the candles in my bedroom; every few weeks. The partial reason behind Durrab's choice to break free of his tribe's shackles, you and him, together as cousins, had set out to make the world your own.

To both of you, change was secondary. But to me, the turns mine and Amani's lives were taken, that too so abruptly was proving to be terrorizing.

My heart still grew unsteady when I replayed that moment of pure curiosity that blanketed Amani's face—why did you ask about me, Elaf Asfour? What was so about our eye contact that absolutely fascinated you, that too to such an extent that my friend was a suitable subject for inquiry?

When all Amani had done was smile and shake her head at me—almost as if she knew—a pinkish hue tinted my cheeks, and I cursed my body for its spontaneity, for the ways it would give me away when my words couldn't.

Amani didn't press for details, and I never gave her any. She resumed her third cup of coffee and bread and butter. Which, dare I say, nauseated me to my core. My stomach was in flips and my appetite just as flushed as I was.

You, Elaf Asfour, had asked about me.

I wasn't sure what the cause of my embarrassment was—the fact that I was visible at all to the male species or that you'd been terrorized with the vision of me falling on my arse by tripping over a rock? Who knew? Maybe I'd now be the subject of your laughing stock. Maybe Amani would join in and share a hearty laugh as well.

As midday was nowhere close to being and there was no use scuffing down breakfast knowing it wouldn't stay down for long, Amani and I parted ways. Where I trudged to the stables, my eyes weary for Wazir, Amani said she had fodder conservation deliveries to pick up.

I stroked a hand through Wazir's mane, his bristle-like fur tickling my fingers. My baby needed a good wash real soon.

Shah, in the stable next to Wazir's, neighed softly before I heard the unmistakable hustle of hooves and rustling of hay. He must have settled down.

I shuffled in my place as Wazir, almost telepathically, mirrored the movement. He rubbed his hooves on the hay below him before he tucked them into himself, his neck over my head. I leaned into Wazir, the heat of his body warming up mine.

"I haven't been normal," I spoke after a while. "Not since yesterday."

I rubbed Wazir's jaw and he closed his eyes. I smiled.

"So easy being a horse, yes? You have the rest of your life figured out. In fact, you don't even need to do the thinking. Some farm girl, namely me, has come along to do it for you. She's going to feed you your favorite Granny Smiths and ride you around the field and love you to death. But who does the thinking for her, Wazir?" I tilted my head to the side. "I wish we had scripts handed over to us, I wish we didn't have to think twice before we said something, not knowing we're erring. I wish we were told how to react to a situation."

"That one moment of looking into Elaf's eyes—I don't know why my heart has made such a big deal out of it, Wazir. I don't know why there's this restlessness in my bones, this ache in my limbs. Something in me has moved. He moved something."

What had you done to me?

***

I couldn't possibly have fallen deeper into the pits of delusion if I thought there would never be a day the Durrab Isa would grace my and Amani's small coffeehouse with his presence. How wrong and superiorly mistaken I was. The day was to come, and it had been fated to be today.

If yesterday's service had crossed heights of hectivity, today's service was falling severely behind. Maybe it was because of Durrab Isa's royale and slightly intimidating presence seated in a corner table of the coffeehouse, or that the villagers had suddenly developed an antipathy towards my culinary skills—either way, the emptiness was felt by all.

I had just mixed a cup of jaggery into an egg when Amani stepped through the one door that separated me from our honorable customer. Her face glowed with elation.

"Elaf will be joining us soon. I've been told by Durrab his favorite is cinnamon tea, best prepare a cup of that too."

The spoon slipped from my hand and a sticky egg splayed all over my apron. My white apron. Damn you, Elaf Asfour.

"I'm not making anything for him."

Amani bit back her smile. "This is your one chance to impress him with your art."

"I didn't master my craft to impress a man," I snapped, and Amani raised a brow.

"I've never seen you so averse towards the male species before."

"I'm averse to how much importance you're lending them." I clenched my jaw. "They're just men. They break hearts and then they leave."

"I thought generalization of either sex wouldn't exist until decades later," Amani laughed. "If we let all this come to fruition right now, what are we leaving for our successors?"

"This isn't funny," I mumbled. "I'm serious."

"And I'm Amani." She held out a hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Amani!"

My best friend stepped up to me, grabbed the napkin from my hands, dank it into a bucket of water, and then rubbed it over my apron.

"He's just a man," Amani smiled. "Don't give him your heart and he won't have anything to break."

***

I had just pushed a pot of cinnamon tea on the stove when the back door shook in a way I'd never envisioned before—angry and violent. I didn't clearly think through what an error I was making when out of curiosity, I moved towards it and pushed it open, only to have the door blown off its weak and futile hinges, and out into the unknown.

All I saw before I was gray and gray and gray. Gray that ruffled my hair out of its braid, gray that blew into my eyes, gray that fell on me and wet my already damp apron.

With the door blown away and my kitchen exposed to the harsher winds, my mind was a fizzled mess. The cupboard rattled with the glass jars and boxes I had put so much effort into arranging. The fire under the stove went out.

I ran to the partition between the coffeehouse and the kitchen, blinking rapidly, my eyes surveying the length of it. The chairs and tables had blown over, the door of the coffeehouse was jutting about violently and there was not a soul in sight.

"Amani!" I called out, putting a hand over my dress as it ruffled. Where had everyone gone to? I'd seen Durrab and Amani step out of the house, but they couldn't have gone far. could they? "Amani!"

I don't know where you'd come from. I don't know what had brought you there, I don't know why you thought it best to run into the coffeehouse. But if you hadn't, you would never have been Romeo.

I squinted as you appeared, a limping old woman's grasp firm around your arm. Our eyes met then and I saw your lips turn up into a small smile before you glanced down at the woman hanging onto you for support.

Your voice was barely audible over the deafening noise. "Do you have any bunkers around here?"

"There's one a block away," I replied, a hand around my mouth. "Take the front door when you leave!"

You turned back to me. "You're not coming?"

"I didn't lock my horse's stable!"

You blinked rapidly. The dust was getting to your eyes, wasn't it? "We don't have time for that!"

We?

Water dripped down my face. "I can't leave him!"

"And I can't let you go!"

"Elaf—"

"Please!"

I'm sorry Wazir, I chanted in my mind as I followed you out of the coffeehouse—or what was left of it. We pushed through gales and gusts that threatened to hurl us back around, but we persisted. We forced ourselves through the pressure, our clothes drenched and hair dripping, until a latch on the ground came into view. I held the woman's hands as you unlatched it, and helped the lady down the ladder.

You held out a hand for me, but I kept mine fisted to my sides.

Eyes downcast, I climbed down the five steps of the ladder into the dark bunker, you following closely after. You latched it from the inside, and a moment of pure silence fell on the three of us, our hair dripping and clothes clung to our bodies.