بسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
In The Name Of Allah, The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful

⊱ ⋆ ⊰

16 Months Later.

Laser lights of different colors pierce the air with the same feeling of ecstasy as that of the audience. Thousands of fans cheer loudly, their voices booming in the air. The stadium, which was once lifeless, is now filled with many young boys and girls. Cool air sweeps past them, and the darkness of the midnight sky conceals their drunken state.

She looks around the stadium from the stage. A euphoric feeling overtakes her, and an enormous grin forms on her face. To her, it seems as if the stars have descended on the earth as Velvet's fans sway their flashlights, singing the song along with all four members. Her eyes crinkle in delight. Wafa gazes to her right, watching her bandmate, Ivan, too, has the same bliss plastered on his features.

After all, today is the first anniversary of Velvet.

"Put your hands up in the air!" Alan shouts. "Let's sing the last song together." A large camera slider makes his live videos, displaying them on magnificent LCD screens on either side of the stage. "After then, Velvet has prepared a little surprise for you, lovely folks." The brown-haired man winks, and the audience shrieks, causing laughter to break out from his lips.

After a second or two, the lights get dimmed except for a few laser lights rocking rhythmically. The tune of the violin plays lowly, and Wafa begins to sing.

Her voice is soft, and her words fall in perfect harmony. Each and every syllable uttered from her mouth is clear, and the light music adds beauty to it, drowning the audience in what feels like another world, a world where they feel no pain, a refuge where they forget the bitterness of their lives.

But for how long? When the dawn emerges, then where will they go?

The people in the arena sing with her, pausing where the vocalist pause and continuing when she continues. As she ends a verse, the low-tuned music changes into slightly heavy beats, and Kyle overtakes it from there smoothly, singing the pre-chorus in his mellifluous voice.

Had it not been for over fifty speakers set in the stadium, his voice would have surely muffled with the shrieking of his fans. After all, his admirers are hundreds of millions of people

ubiquitous, followed by Ivan.

The charcoal-haired man stops singing for a few seconds before they reach the chorus. Then the voices of all four singers amalgamate with each other, forming a perfect harmony, and birthing the feeling of euphoria within the crowd.

As the music again drops to low beats, Ivan begins to sing the following verse after the chorus, then Alan proceeds to sing the bridge, and Wafa finishes it.

The dark clouds loom over the sky. People are lost in their own temporary bliss, moving their bodies seductively, oblivious that the morning sun will soon rise and expose their reprehensive deeds. For how long will they run from the light? Do they think the darkness will remain eternally, and they can continue their acts without a just reckoning? Yet, they proceed to remain ignorant.

And now, the arena is akin to the black sky as most stage lights are getting dimmed. The members, altogether run to the center of the stage under the small rays of moonlight, just as they rehearsed.

The whoosh sound of two rocket fireworks from the middle of the stage launched in opposite directions making a V, pierce the air. The intensity of the lights brightens, and thousands of red and white colored petals spread in the air across the stadium, thrown by large blowers.

As a result of pure joy, the crowd screams in delight and happiness, raising their phones so as to not let a single moment be missed in their recordings.

⊰|                   |⊱

The chilly air blows and the stars twinkle over the RV bus driving on the motorway. Four of its passengers are in deep sleep, one driving and the other one gazing outside at the night sky.

The gleaming stars remind her of fans, them swaying colored lights at the concert. But the view in front of her possesses a charm of its own unlike any other.

Wafa gets up from the small sitting area against the windows, walking briskly to the driver's seat.

"Hey, Hebrew." The vocalist whispers.

Hebrew turns back to look at her for a second before looking back at the road. Dark hue under his eyes, and his beard in a multi-color of black and grey.

Wafa glances at the sleeping figure of her manager, Vanessa, curled up in a fleece blanket on the front passenger seat. Her attention shifts back to the man driving. "Can we stop here for ten minutes, please?"

He again turns back and looks at her, cocking his eyebrow, assuming her to be doltish. Then resumes focusing on the road.

"Please, Heb! I need to pray quickly." Wafa urges. "Plus, you look like a dried piece of twig. It'll be good if you take a short break." She smiles innocently.

"No." The man blatantly says. But when a minute or so passed, observing from the corner of his small eyes, Wafa staying still where she was standing before, he gruffs, "Can you not pray later?"

"It has to be before sunrise, which is about--" The vocalist peers at her watch, "in twenty minutes."

Having no response from the Hebrew, Wafa pleads, causing him to sigh.

"How many times do I have to do this?" The man murmurs to himself. "Fine," He announces. "Just ten minutes. If you are late, I will leave you out here in these deserted fields." The driver threatens.

The brown-haired girl shrieks in victory but covers her mouth in an instant upon realizing the others are sleeping. Her head snaps to the two pairs of bunk beds with curtains drawn over them. Relief washes over her after noticing no movements. Thus, with cautious steps, she hurriedly runs to the bathroom.

Cleaning up and performing ablution, she comes out delved in thoughts of finding a head covering in haste, that her hand collided with the bowl at the corner, causing it to fall with a loud thrash.

"Argh!" Wafa groans in frustration as she picks up the bowl placing it back on the table. Unmindful that the coal-black-haired man mumbles profanities upon being disturbed from his slumber.

Rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, the man pulls the draped curtains around his bottom bunk bed. His naturally curled eyelashes add beauty to his deathly glare.

Oblivious to a pair of saxe orbs glaring at her, the brown-haired rummages through the drawers, looking for a spare veil. Turning around with a cream-colored scarf in her hands, a gasp escapes her lips upon finding Kyle sitting on his bed with an agitated expression.

"Oh," Why did it have to be him out of all three of them? "Kyler, rise and shine." Wafa chirps, well aware of how he despises this name.

The vocalist gets up and pulls the curtains from the windows berserkly. "What?" He looks at the brown-haired incredulously, "It's not even morning now!"

As of cue, the bus stops.

"Why are we stopping? I thought our orders from Seiga were to travel the entire night so that we get to Mombasa by morning." Kyle looks back at the window with bewildered eyes. "This is surely not Mombasa."

"We're taking a break for about fifteen minutes. Heb is tired from driving continuously for six hours, and I have to pray before sunrise." Wafa says cheekily.

As the bus door swiftly opens, he sees Wafa getting off while wrapping the veil over her head, causing the colored-eyed man to groan dramatically.

"You've got to be kidding me." He mumbles to himself before picking his phone up from his bed, and with lazy steps, Kyle exits the jet-black RV bus.

The charcoal-haired man shudders as the cold air sweeps past him. His saxe lens roams over to the scene in front of him. Vast green fields to where his sight reaches. The sky gleams with the small beams of light emerging from one side. He looks at the opposite side and finds it being prevailed by the darkness.

Beautiful. Kyle muses with a soft smile gracing his lips.

"If I can only identify the direction of the Qibla," Wafa says to herself, tapping her finger on her chin, moving around aimlessly here and there with her woodsy lens glued to the screen.

The midnight-haired man halts in his tracks after hearing Wafa's voice. His saxe lens focused on her. "What a moron!" Kyle mutters to himself, taking light steps toward her. "What are you doing?" He asks her.

"Trying to find the right direction of the Qibla, but my mobile keeps blacking out," Wafa informs, steading her motion. "Oh, and what is Qibla, you may ask, darling?" She smiles broadly, altering her posture to face him.

"I did not ask."

"Well, Qibla is basically the direction towards the Ka'aba, which is in Makkah, a city in Saudia Arabia, where Muslims all over the world, irrespective of their color, creed, or cast, pray in the same direction, joining shoulder to shoulder." Wafa babbles.

"I already know that, dummy." Kyle shakes his head in disappointment. "Do you think after spending nearly every day for more than a year, I would not find out about that with you praying many times a day, even in the middle of the night?" He smacks her head, but she quickly crouches down and backs away, avoiding physical contact.

"Hey, kids!"

Both their heads shot up to the source of the sound.

"Six more minutes, then I am driving out of here," Stretching his muscles, Hebrew yells from across the pitch-black bus.

Panic rises in her body, and she starts shaking her phone violently. Sighing, the saxe-lens-eyed man pulls out his phone from his pocket. After a few seconds, he shows the screen to her.

"Wait, what?" Wafa's eyes pop out of their socket upon looking at the compass pointing to their left, the direction of Qibla. "You have this app?" The vocalist asks, incredulity birthing in her orbs.

"Do you want to be left abandoned here? You found the direction. Go pray!" He pulls away his phone, shooing her off in an attempt to conceal the redness of his cheek.

Mumbling a small thanks with a grateful smile, Wafa straightens her posture and begins the qiyam. Meanwhile, Kyle sits beside her on the ground, maintaining a respectable distance between them, staring at the horizon.

The grass beneath her feet pokes her a little, but she doesn't mind it, for there is beauty in praying barefoot on the grassy ground, vaporizing any sort of haughtiness she may have developed n her bosom.

Subhana Rabbiyal Azeem. Wafa bows and whispers the Praise of her Creator several times.

(Glorifying The One, Who Possesses Ultimate Greatness)

Sami Allahu liman hamidah Rabbana wa lakal hamd. She says when coming to the erect position after bowing. A sense of tranquility washes over her heart. And all the worries she had, vanished in thin air.

(God hears those who praise Him. Oh, our Lord, all praise is to You)

Reciting the takbeer, the woodsy-lens-eyed girl goes down to prostrate. The grass under her legs feels soft, making the vocalist believe she is sitting on a cloud, not on the bare ground. The pleasantly sweet scent of grass hits her nostrils, and dew drops kiss her face as she puts her head on the ground before the Lord of the Worlds. And at this point, Wafa no longer feels like 'Wafa from Velvet' a teen millionaire, but a humble slave of Allah Almighty.

Finishing her salah, the young maiden raises her hands to seek forgiveness, along with asking for refuge in Allaah from His Wrath, from being overcome by people, and from being unable to differentiate between virtue and sin.

(prayer)

Gazing to her right, Wafa looks at Kyle, who is sitting with his arms on top of his knees, and his lens fixates on the horizon. So, she, too, shifts her focus to the horizon until a pebble is thrown at her head, obliterating the serenity surrounding them.

"Hey!" The vocalist exclaims, glaring at the imposter.

"I can tell something is bothering you," Kyle states with surety.

Wafa chuckles, and her voice echoes in the air. "To be honest, I am not worried about it, but I can imagine the headlines of numerous articles and countless interrogations that'll come my way in the days to come," She says while sneering.

"Wafa from Velvet again disappointed us by wearing a full-covered purple glittery shirt paired with belle-bottom silk trousers on their first-anniversary concert." She mimics in a thick British accent.

Sliding to a high-pitched American girl's voice, the brown-haired says, "She must be absolutely hideous behind that ton of clothing. I wonder what Seiga saw in her to make her part of the Velvet band."

"At least she should have dressed better at the concert. A black spot on the name of a pop star." She changes her accent into a French-English.

"Arr, those bunch of scallywag Muzlims. They should go back to the desert." Transiting her accent to those of the pirates', she says and then chuckles loudly.

Her laughter resonates in the field.

"Oh, don't look at me like this," Wafa waves her hand dismissively at Kyle while his expression remains serious, his eyes locking up with hers, finding no humor.

"Who said you are ugly? A nut-head, yes. But surely not a hideous person." The young man solemnly says.

She smiles, continuing to watch the sunrise from the horizon. The vocalist finds it mesmerizing how many different hues in the sky are birthing, one after the other, blending smoothly.

"They judge me ruthlessly," Wafa says, almost in a whisper. "They think I am not a complete person as I don't show my skin like the others. That I am restricted because I don't kiss boys, or go out on dates, or sleep with men like many of them." A sigh escapes her, and she looks up at the sky. The sun has started to rise, and its light prepares to conquer the sky. "How wrong of them, for I can enjoy fully, not with their terms, but rather within the boundaries of my religion. But they are blind. All of them."

A moment of silence overshadows both lost in their own daze.

"Have you ever thought why pearls are soo valuable and not crap?" Kyle asks after a few seconds, changing his posture into a leisurely one.

The brown-haired girl tilts her head, confusion mingling in her woodsy lens upon the turn of their conversation.

"It has value because it is expensive. It is not accessible, for it is deep in the sea. And dog crap? You'll see it everywhere, and free to use. It is out there, open for everyone." Kyle says with a smirk.

Ah, if only she knew they never changed the topic. Indeed, his way of comforting her soothes her heart. A grin forms on her features.

"I never expected you to be supportive of me in this regard," She lightly teases with a mischievous smile. "Don't get me wrong, but both of us are like the earth and the sky. Our beliefs, our family and friend-circle are soo unalike, yet --" She voices out with no sign of tease this time except for sincerity.

As if a bucket of ice water is thrown at Kyle, he jerks. Yes, when have I become supportive of her? When did my morals change? I remember fighting JoL|in for making her part of our group. Maybe after getting to know her completely, I changed. Or perhaps after seeing her in my dream, my heart started to soften slowly in my oblivion? I don't know. The charcoal-haired man ponders.

Turning his attention to her, Kyle smiles mischievously, mirroring her previous actions, "Now, don't look at me like this." He throws her words right back at her, causing her to shake out of her thoughts while hiding his inner conflict flawlessly.

"Huh? I--I didn't intend to stare at you!" Wafa instantly averts her gaze. Her cheeks flushed, and her jaw clenched.

"Hey, Woffles." The vocalist calls out to her.

"What?!" The brown-haired demands.

"Uhh-- I think we should head back to the bus now," Kyle says while pointing at the moving bus with a starting speed.

"WHAT?!"

⊱ ⋆ ⊰

| HADITH |

The Prophet (ﷺ) said: A man follows the religion of his friend; so each one should consider whom he makes his friend.

-Sunan Abi Dawud 4833

| AUTHOR'S NOTE |

Edited version is finally out! More to come soon, In Shaa Allah!

May Allah  ﷻ grant you all Light Upon Light!

- W A L I Y A