The parchment was still very cold when I saw her. She was wearing a blue overcoat. I gestured her to come over to my side but she said she couldn’t and that’s when I saw she was hurt in the knee and had a blue-coloured bandage on it.
It then started to rain, as expected. She had already begun to go when I ran to her side. I was standing beside her the next instant, catching my almost dead breath, having caught up with her. She looked at me with no expression on her face.
There was some kind of solemn silence in that moment. She said nothing.
She couldn’t, she gesticulated.
“Are you feeling cold?” I asked her.
She motioned for us to sit.
“Are you feeling cold?” I tried to ask with my gestures, once again.
She didn’t reply. She was too busy looking at the icicles hanging from the tree.
We just sat there like that, for some time.
The rain began to grow slightly louder.
“I think we should go,” I said, getting up to leave.
She stopped me with her hand and gestured me to sit.
“There’s a shelter at the back of the road,” I explained.
She didn’t seem interested.
So we just sat there.
She looked at the rain pattering on the road, on the leaves, on our clothes. Just sat there and looked.
Slowly, she brought her hand forward for the raindrops to soak her palms. She smiled as she caught the raindrops, one by one, in her hand.
The rains staccatoed in their beat. Mild at times. Loud at others.
She enjoyed all those different rhythms alike.
And then they began to evanesce.
Bit by bit.
One drop after the other.
She just closed her eyes and let them go.
We just sat there.
She was waiting for the rains once again, I guessed. I didn’t know what I was waiting for.
Everything suddenly looked very fresh, even though it was dark.
I was caught up in my own world of thoughts when she tapped me on the shoulder.
She smiled.
I smiled back.
She smiled wider.
“Had fun?”
She nodded.
“Do we go now?”
She nodded.
We were walking along the parchment that suddenly seemed very wet, refreshing and illuminated.
I breathed in the fresh air as much as I could.
“What’s your name?”
She seemed flummoxed at the question for a while and then clicked her fingers.
“What?”
She extricated a flower from her pocket and then pointed it to me.
It was a rose.
“Rose,” I said. “What a beautiful name.”
She smiled.
“Where do you live?” I probed further.
Her bright face suddenly turned gloomy.
After a long pause, she pointed up to the sky with her hands.
That’s when I first noticed how fragile they were.
“The rains have stopped,” I said, unable to comprehend her gesture.
She pointed up twice the next time.
Gauging my expression, she took out a piece of paper and wrote something.
And then passed it onto me.
“Heaven,” it said.
“Do you believe in heaven and hell?” I asked her.
She nodded.
I smiled.
She smiled too.
I smiled wider.
“I have cancer…” she wrote at the back of another piece of paper and passed it onto me.
I stood still for a moment and looked at her.
Her face was expressionless.
“Are you dead?”
“Going to be.”
“Oh.”
I took a long pause as she looked at me.
“There’s no heaven or hell,” I told her, after a minute or two. "If you die, you will live in a paradise like sky. In a place that has no time. No boundaries. Just infinites. It will be great," I added.
She looked a bit confused.
“I assure you, don’t worry,” I smiled.
“Okay,” she seemed to say.
And then beamed.
“I think I should go,” I said.
She nodded.
So I walked away. Leaving behind a trail of vague and nebulous winds behind me, hoping to see the blue overcoat once again, soon.