GIRL with my hart

….and this was their story.

He was named Nanik, as his mother called him at her birthing bed. A name that translated to mean “mother’s love”.

The boy had only just seen his eighteenth birth moon at this time. Tall and lithe as a herdsman’s cane. He was lean of bone and chest, with piercing brown eyes and an easy smile. An easiness that spread into a loving character. No one found fault with Nanik. A friend of all.

Nanik was shy around the girls though. He could hold his groin in a conversation, flirt even. But how to approach. How to tell a ‘strange’ girl he fancied her? He was truly a boy that fancied a lot.

And of his family? Mother had been found by the fountain that led on to the temple’s courtyard. She had a pale woman then; blisters on her feet and face, and half-dying and heavily pregnant that night. She didn’t live long after she breathed her baby boy’s name, and kissed the warm skin of his forehead. Her sole surviving love.

The temple had been home and family for Nanik. A precocious boy, he read every scroll and book in the library, and in the archives adjoining the crypts under the central domed hall. He learnt arithmetic and astronomy, and an old, stooped master taught him philosophy and the fundamentals of history: of the old heroes and the new tyrants.

It was a good life young Nanik lived. Playing at stick and balls with the other boys, and swimming in the creek by the meadow when the heat came. He hunted quails, and picked snails in the bushes after it rained. He was best at stoning mangoes off the trees, ad one evening, he skipped the benedictory prayers at sunset and sneaked off to a grove high up on the mountains. Surrounded by cedars and sentinel eucalyptus, he painted a setting sky in hues of crimson, orange and yellow. It was a beautiful portrait �" with blinking stars and a swallow gliding against the canvass of sky.

 But night soon came for Nanik. Counting to the days he would see his tenth nameday, he turned pale in face and sallow of skin. The lines of his limbs and bone turned gaunt, and his grew too weak to stand of their own. He was bedridden. It was an ailment that confused the priests and the sisters, and the monks would only stand a far away and would shake their shaved heads. None knew what ailed Nanik….

And a famed seer was sought on a remote island in the east. A blood sickness, the long-bearded man explained it was. It was a truly fatal type, and would most likely kill the sick boy �" before he was a man most probably. But there was an option. What life he had could be preserved; only by a consistent transfer of blood when the symptoms came. And the boy must be set to bed most of the time. A little play could easily kill him as a cold definitely would.

And life was drab. Nanik ate when the monks fed him, and listened to the other boys play in the yard from the prison of his bed. He lived to see a scarlet moon set on his eighteenth birthday, but it was an uneventful life. An episode had recurred in such near-death fashion, it had had the priests on their wits and defenses. And so the yard was barred to him. The feel of the warm tropical sun on his face and the late humid wind rushing all over his skin �" the noise from the weaverbirds on the oil palm plantation where the boys played catch; the sweet taste of spring water, and the joy of running naked under a rain: all of these now were replaced by the stuffy odor of poultice and salve, and the throaty whispers of his nurses and care-givers. A truly bland life it was.

Until HER.

He knew her only for the three months of Fenanra, Eknir and the festive Samsyna. She was only meant to be the new orphan girl who caught a long look of as he watched her from the window of his room. She was like Anyara �" the goddess �" on that yard. Slender, pretty and tall. She turned soon and they locked eyes. Her eyes were so big and so dark, they looked almost black. She had dimples when she smiled, and kept pushing her short black hair from her face. She waved at him……

And then she was more that the new orphan-girl.

Amara was his bestfriend, companion, and even much more. He smiled a lot, and she told plenty jokes. You couldn’t help it, not when she made those faces, or laughed like she had a million cares and no worries. She was the free-est girl he’d ever known. So much spirit in her sprite limbs, the long narrow nose and pouty lips. Each minute �" second, found better charm when she was in it.

Fairytale. Cliché? Maybe….

He didn’t need the outside world so much anymore. She brought it all to him: all their stories, the gossips, the plays, the laughs �" the cries and hurts also. Hers were the senses he felt the world through. And she never felt sorry, or pity �" not for him. “Troubles aren’t special Nanik, everyone gets them,” she joked. “So quit whining and start laughing.” She always winked then. And she laughed.

But one night �" a cold summer night that smelled of flowers and ripening mangoes �" she didn’t smile. She broke off abruptly in the middle of a story, clutched her chest hard and broke into a long wheeze. She slumped, falling face-first onto the cold stone floor.

The monks knew what was wrong this time, everyone had known, except Nanik. Amara had a heart condition, he was later told. It was hereditary, and there was no cure. She was going to die. Definitely.

But if she got a new heart……

 

Dear Amara,

One of the first things the priest taught was told in one word: choice. It was universal. Unprejudiced. Everyone gets to have it. Even when you’re as sick as I am, and can’t leave your bedroom, and need a transfusion of new blood every other week. You still get a choice. And you get friends also.

I got you Amara.

It was three months of a colorful life knowing you. It was the best of an eighteen-year existence. I truly enjoyed every second of it.

We all get to die, the priests told me so. That was why my mother died. But you should get to live Amara. Not for you �" sorry if I hurt your feelings �" but for the world out there that still needs you. To make them laugh, and to make them smile. To let them feel that someone notices. That you see, and you notice.

When you wake up Amara, and the monks explain everything. Don’t dare blame you. It was a choice between a long drab life, and a short one where I get to make a meaning. I chose ME. This way I get to say that I gave the world a second chance to know you.

You’ve got my heart Amara. Don’t waste it…….

                Nanik.

  

Author's Note

any comment - thought is greatly welcomed :)

Reviews

[Corset]

The ultimate gift, now he will run and play and live vicariously through his friend Amara, his heart will beat and love and rejoice.

[Krizito]

and that's all this life should be about: the living and running and laughing.

[barleygirl]

Very imaginative & uplifting story. I love the way you SHOW instead of tell, using a ton of details & invoking all the senses. Good balance of lofty language & everyday expressions, like a poetic storyteller . . . Fondly, Margie

[Krizito]

Lofty languages? I'm an artist, everything is simple with me. And I'm not even bragging *honest*

[zaisham9393]

it's beautiful!I absolutely loved it!

[Krizito]

told you i was good writer. Thanks for taking the time.

[zaisham9393]

I never doubted that! Sure, no problem!