Chapter 5: Illusions

Chapter 5: Illusions

Abhay’s P.O.V

For a couple of seconds, I felt flabbergasted.

Yes, I was a healthy male of twenty seven with a proper sexual appetite, but I’ve never imagined myself naked and in bed with any women. I was brought up with parents who had taught me that in our culture, sex before marriage was not the right way to go about it. And I’d always believed in that principle.

Yes, I’ve had a couple of relationships in my life. Once when I was in high school, with a girl about three years younger than me, we had drifted apart after I left school to join college. My second relationship had been in my second year of college, with a girl in my class who had shared my enthusiasm for photography. But we too had drifted apart right after I’d landed a job at Lifestyle Magazine as an intern and she had left for Calcutta to work for The Daily Telegraph.

But I’ve never had any physical relationships with either of my ex’s. We had kissed, yes, I wasn’t that much of a saint, but we have never gone farther than that. And after landing my job I had been too busy with my job to actually get into any kind of relationship. There was a dream house that I wanted to built, a dream car I had to purchase and I had also planned several trips to foreign lands that would never be fulfilled if I didn’t have money in my pocket.

Five years of continuous work without taking any vacations, I was almost close enough to achieving my first goal and I also had some extra bucks in my wallet to afford a foreign tour; women had been the farthest thought in my mind. And then, in walks a foreigner with silver hair, and just like that…all my restrains fly out the window.

Never in my life have I ever had such a visceral reaction to someone. It was almost like the images that flashed in my mind after watching her were real...so very real. The touch of my fingers on her pale white skin, the feel of her plump, pink lips on mine…it was like I could feel her right now, as if she were a part of me…which was very absurd and creepy because I’d just met the woman…hell, seen her for the first time.

But there was something about her that kept nagging on my senses. As I watched a waiter drift t towards the women, after a hard fight at the back with the other waiters on who would take their order, he immediately took a couple steps back as soon as that icy blue gaze landed on him. There was an underlying sense of danger to her, to both the women. Like, despite the quiet demeanor, they were predators in disguise capable of unimaginable violence.

Once again, that thought left me stunned. I had hardly laid my eyes on the women and yet here I was, making ridiculous assumptions while sitting idly by and letting my food get cold.

“Bring us some laal maas and four thepla’s. And two glasses of Chaach!” The Gujarati girl ordered and my eyebrows disappeared into my hairline.

Thepla’s, a kind of flat bread made from various spices and herbs, was spicy all by itself. To add laal mass with that, a red meat curry that was marinated completely with red hot peppers before cooking, therefore gaining the name laal maas because of it vibrant red color…I took a couple sips of my chaach to cool myself off on their behalf.

Does the silver haired woman not know what they were ordering? Should I warn them beforehand?

But even as I thought that, the waiter was already on his way to bring out the dishes and my food had partially gone cold. I took another mouthful of the rice and daal, glad that the cold had taken away some of the heat from the cooking, although there was still a slow burn at the back of my throat.

I was down three more mouthfuls before the waiter brought out their order, still piping hot with steam rising from the food. I prayed to the gods above that they didn’t need to be hospitalized by the time they had taken their first bite.

But then, I, along with several others that had been fascinated by the two women, watched in astonishment as they tore away at their thepla’s and dipped it in the spicy red meat and ate them as if they did this every single day.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw a few people look impressed, a few bills exchanged hands as bets were lost and the two women took their time eating their fill of chilies and taking small sips of the chaach without bothering about anything going around them. They seemed to be lost in conversation. The black haired, caramel skinned woman gave a carefree laugh as the silver haired woman spoke to her and that too had a few heads turning.

But then I noticed the slight stiffness to the silver haired woman, it was so slight that anyone could have easily missed it. But I liked to think that I had a photographer’s eye and that’s probably why I’d noticed it in the first place. The uneasiness was clear in the slight stiffness to her shoulders, the rigidity of her spine and the slight crinkle between her brows.

Watching them nearing the end of their meal, I quickly gulped down my ice cold food, ignoring the burst of silent heat and sucking it up like a man, and drank the rest of my chaach, just in time to find the women asking for the bill from the waiter.

I lifted my hand and motioned for another waiter to get my bill and as our tables were cleared and bills paid, hands washed in the warm lime water that had arrived in small bowls; the women stood up from their seat and turning towards the exit, ready to leave. Swearing some colorful words under my breath, I tried to come up with an excuse to talk to the silver haired girl while snatching my camera from the corner of the table and readying myself to get up.

But just as soon as the women had stepped out of the hotel, the silver haired woman turned to look back at me, and the iciness of her gaze froze me in place.

Her eyes were like two shards of ice, sharp and unyielding, like a cobra winding itself up just before the killing strike. The underlying sense of danger magnified by tenfold and I could feel the hair on my nape stand in attention. There was something about her eyes that seemed different…almost inhuman.

I concentrated on her eyes, trying to figure out what was wrong with it now, even as I stood frozen in my spot. With a start I realized that it wasn’t the blazing desert sun that was playing tricks with her eyes, they seemed to be glowing from within, like a diamond does when light strikes the right angles.

And just for a second, my mind decided to cross the line and trip me into insanity, because it wasn’t the woman I saw standing in her colorful clothes and silver hair, but a white wolf with eyes of blue so pure, I could drown in them for all eternity. Just for a fleeting second.

And then they were just…gone.