The sun was near the horizon and splotches of orange-yellow-reds were scattered across the sky. He couldn't tell if it was supposed to be the sunrise or the sunset. It felt right. After all, he wasn't sure if it was the beginning or the end.

She was sitting on a bench in the distance, looking at the horizon too, her back towards him. He trudged in her direction, every step filled with a different emotion. Some in eager anticipation, some in dread.

His heart was seized by anxiety. What if she walked away before he reached her? The distance seemed to stretch on for miles and the climb grew steeper. He started praying to the Gods he didn't believe in. Please make her wait! Or could she at least turn around? The thirst in him to catch a glimpse of that sweet face left him delirious.

Someone up there must have heard his pleas, because he was soon much closer to her than expected, and she looked over her shoulder. Her warm chocolate brown eyes were searching for something, but they did not rest on him. She was dressed in a white saree today. The wind tousled her shoulder length hair, hiding part of her face, but he could very clearly see her rosy lips. He wanted them to curve into a smile, but they just stayed slightly parted, as if she wanted to say something but couldn't decide on what to say.

Thinking she was just a few meters away, he tried to gather speed. Suddenly she stood up and turned away her face. No! Please no!! Even before he saw it, his heart started hammering in dreaded anticipation. She seemed to almost glide away into a mist that descended out of nowhere, but not before his eyes unwillingly absorbed the sight of the red specks starkly contrasting against the white of her saree.

He woke up his heart racing unevenly.

Sameer cursed under his breath as he tried to find the bottle of water in the dark. Finding it on the floor by the bed, he gulped almost half of it. As his heartbeat slowed down, instead of lying down again he sat leaning against the headboard. Sleep wouldn't come back any time soon, he knew.

It had been almost ten months, he calculated, since he last dreamt of her. So why now, he wondered a little haplessly. And then he snorted. Of course, because she would never stop haunting him! Every time, he had felt like he was moving on... or just making the slightest progress with the idea of moving on, she would invade his dreams and banish the notion.

Over the years there had been a lot of versions of this dream. Mostly they had been of a sombre theme, in a few she had smiled slightly and very rarely had she laughed. On a handful of occasions, they had been close, very close and he had woken up grinning like a Cheshire cat and then walked around the next day with a spring in his step. But then, as if to negate the feel-good-factor, there had been a few rather terrible ones too, especially one.

The memory of that first time he had dreamt of her, never failed to shake him to his core. It had come about two months after he had last seen her. That he had dreamt of her, hadn't been a surprise, considering she had been on his mind constantly. But the contents had been so bizarre... bordering on macabre really. After much analysis, he'd tried to justify it as a manifestation of the pain he'd been encountering due to the recent loss in his life. But the image of the girl silently wailing, as the blood kept soaking through her white shalwar-kameez, was imprinted on his being.

Coming back to the present, he dwelt on the latest one. All these years later, his yearning for her still lurked just under the surface. Hidden from the world, but not himself. Somewhere along the line, he had stopped questioning this yearning and accepted it as just something that he was now made of.

As much as he liked to blame her for this perceived haunting, he knew it was all him really. A stubborn part of him, unwilling to let go of her. Was it his heart or his ego? He had never been able to decide.

Uss shaaskh se kuch toh roohani rahi hogi,

Pal do pal ki roomani ka yeh asar toh na hota!

(Surely there must have been a soul connection with that person,

This couldn't possibly be the effect of just a few moments of romance!)