Bow and Arrow...

  I have been serving my Master for the last 10 years. Strong as the gusty winds with a flexible spine and intricately drawn flowers adorning my wooden body, I have been my Master’s most faithful and prized possession, his constant companion in victories and defeat, his pride and joy of yesteryear's youth. Placed delicately over the mantelpiece, I would often look on haughtily at his other trivial possessions, my scorn almost palpable at their uselessness. I was beyond their reach, detached and invincible, their friendly bonds a disgust and abhorrence to my very soul. I have been carried on my Master’s shoulders, laid defeat to inflated archers, pierced the very hide of thickly veiled creatures and my indomitable spirit, unbending and unyielding, could not comprehend the necessity and splendour of humility.

  Yet my spirit felt restless for it craved her presence. After all these years I still couldn't feign detachment and prove myself immune to her beauty. I have touched and felt so many of her kind, guided them skilfully to their targets and left them to my Master’s mercy to do as he pleased. They had been discarded with ruthlessness after repeated exploitation, their slender and fragile frames worthless and futile after incessant exercise and their pleas had failed to stir my soul. She had never begged, never ever looked my way except to critically access my demeanour with a conceited disdain. Her touch left me breathless... Together we had brought down so many, rejoiced in our glory and had still remained apart. I often searched for her amidst the rows of arrows Master kept neatly arranged in the drawing room, hoping beyond hope that Master had not racked her beautiful body apart. Slender yet strangely alluring... Open yet strangely detached... She had left me rankled and distressed with her quiet mystery. She kept coming back to haunt my dreams and left me peculiarly vulnerable to her charms time and again.

  Master, ofcourse, was getting on in years and he no longer wielded the awe inspiring skill and expertise of his youth. His hunger for glory was now satiated and as I lay there on the mantelpiece day after day, inactivity and idleness softening my lifelong vanity, I found myself yearning for the warmth of friendly attachment of the others around. But pride held me away; my loneliness unwilling to accept their sympathy.

  Drowning in this self inflicted loathing and nostalgia, it took me by surprise when I felt Master’s hands on my body. Adrenaline rushed through my body and excitement filled my core. Maybe after all this time Master too had been unable to resist the temptation of reliving those moments of past glory, maybe his hunger was not yet satiated. As his purposeful steps crossed the expanse of the drawing room, I breathed in the scent of the air around me. But Master had other plans. He unlocked the door to a hidden room adjacent to the drawing space and all the breath left my body. There she lay placed gracefully over the mahogany table, her spiked ends glinting in the light filtering from the windows around. Her striking willowy frame was a little worn out, yet I could still trace the design that had adorned her beautiful lithe body. And as her sight filled my famished eyes, I felt humbled. I felt the futility of my vanity and as Master left me to rot in this unknown abyss, my pride came crushing down from the clouds above to fill me with peace.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Unrequited..

All I can remember is the cold and the darkness. I was born into it, grew up with it all around my existence and never knew that there was a brighter, more lustrous world up above until the day I was old enough to venture out into it. The darkness was my comfort, the deep tunnels my retreat. The little light that filtered through very rarely was an abhorrence, a plague that I avoided, fearing it was somehow potent enough to shatter my peace.

When finally the day arrived for me to go seeking out provisions for the community, an unnatural premonition of fear gripped me. I felt sick and dizzy, dragging my feet slowly through the familiar tunnels, towards the alien shimmering world above. I breathed deeply, urging my fears to lay silent and cold as with ever increasing audacity I trod through the dark underground maze.

Gradually soft light filled the tunnels, steadily dispelling the ever consistent darkness of my life, and with a sudden outburst of willfulness I rushed ahead and broke free of the sinister fear as sunlight filled my soul. I was blinded and lost, yet my life had changed forever. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the light, I was dazzled by the brilliance of the world around me. It was beautiful and astonishing, its hues filling my heart with warmth.

It was then that I saw her, standing quietly under the brilliance of the sun, her dusky skin glowing with pleasant health. She seemed to be lost in some thought of her own while the sun rays reflected off her whole being. She seemed surreal in her trance like state and I desperately wished to touch that warm skin, to feel its glow radiating through mine. And I kept coming back again and again each day to drink in her beauty. I loathed the dark tunnels now, their cold and gloom a stark contrast to everything up above. Her beauty was balm to my existence and the desire to feel her warmth kept steadily growing with each passing day.

It has been months and collecting provisions for the community is a tedious task. Yet I tread through the black tunnels towards the ever brilliant surface and look forward to seeing her up there each day. Of late I have watched her sleep, seemingly more exhausted, her glow gradually fading. A dark worry haunts her sleep and manifests itself around her eyes while her health diminishes like the setting sun on the horizon. Her skin deflates closer to her bones and a dark omen fills my heart.

So here I stand tonight, watching the moonlight fill her room with its pale hue. I creep through its vast expanse, my accelerated heart beat deafening to my own senses. The covers on her bed are soft and warm and exhilaration, thrill and ecstasy are almost blatantly palpable to my senses. Her hand lies upturned on the bed and as I stealthily climb up her wrist a deadly cold infuses my body. The warmth I had so yearned for fails to fill my being as I feel no pulse beating life through her. I recoil in fear, her death reaching out to me like suffocating tendrils craving to softly enclose round my neck. The room is suddenly flooded in pitch black darkness and I escape to the ever present deep tunnels to seek solace.