“I can’t ask you to come with me in the middle of the winter. I’ll just take your clothes and be off.”

We had argued all the pros and cons of the plan and concluded that it was risky, but our best shot nonetheless. And here he was unwilling to let me tag along. That had been the subject of the argument for the last ten minutes.

“You’re going off nowhere without me, mister.” I put my hands on my hips, getting up from the chair.

“Feisty is nice. I admire it. But I am an honourable man and I can’t risk taking a human in the battle of nature.” He stopped his pacing midway and whipped back at me.

“Well, confidence is nice. But your overconfidence will kill you. So, I am coming.”

“This is a suicide mission.” His eyes locked on mine. They were intensely fierce, like a lion trying to intimidate another. But I wasn’t one to back off. I stared back.

“Staying here will kill me faster than anything else. I have no money, no warmth and no food. I’d rather be out there, doing something useful than sitting here waiting passively for Shishira’s temperature tantrums to kill me.”

“Oh! I hadn’t thought that—wait, did you just make that word up?”

“Well now you have. So don’t you dare throw a temperature tantrum—yes I made that up—take me along.” I smirked.
“But still—”-

“Okay, you don’t have to take me to the real battle.” I let the honey drizzle into my voice. “Grishma’s palace must be warm. At least leave me around there somewhere so I don’t freeze.”

I could see it in his eyes that he was running out of logic to not take me along. 

“Why do you want to do this?”

“Because I lost you once and I can’t lose you again,” I said in my head. I was getting tired of the same question. It was almost as if he didn’t want me as company.

“Because I can’t just stay here. I need to be near you for warmth and you need to be near me to mask your essence,” I said out loud.

I saw defeat in his eyes and a hint of something else—relief. Damn! He always wanted me to come but his inherent chivalry wasn’t allowing him.

   🍂🍁🍂

The night had passed by uneventfully and by the time the first light of the morning shimmered through the cloud cover, we had already set out. I had gotten up earlier than him and gone to the basement to extract my warmest winter clothes and was now waddling through the snow in my brown down parka and knee high snow boots. 

“You look like a pregnant penguin.” Aadi shoved his foot into the snow skilfully, striding like a proud peacock. “Your clothes are heavier than you.”

“I am not a furnace like you. I will freeze,” I rolled my eyes. 

“I would’ve put you inside mine and carried you like a kangaroo baby in a pouch.” I laughed at the image in my head.

I had lent him grandpa’s old coat. It was black fur and stuffed with bird feathers like mine. That compounded with the strong leather boots, towering over me, he looked absolutely stunning. Needless to say he still wasn’t wearing a shirt though I had managed convince him for a pair of pants after arguing for half an hour straight in the morning.

“The pants are scratchy,” he complained, holding out his arm to steady me for the umpteenth time. 

“Your willy would’ve gotten cold otherwise,” I joked.

“I guess the pants are more for your sanity than my protection.” There was a naughty gleam in his eyes. 

“Maybe.” I narrowed my eyes at him and continued my graceless walk. It had been a few minutes since I had lost sight of my house and we were climbing the gentle snowy slopes of the mountain. There really was no direction to follow, but Aadi said he had an instinct and so we basically we were chasing his gut feeling into the unknown.

“So, what are we looking for exactly?” I asked again.

“There has to be the entrance to a cave.” He mumbled, picking up a frozen stick from the ground and poking the snow. I picked up one too, looking around for any possible signs of a cave. Any opening whatsoever would have been long buried under layers of snow fallen over the last few days.

“What is in the cave?” 

“My plan.”

“What plan?” I sliced my stick through dried bramble which might once have been bushes.

“I made a plan while I was hiding out there. It was on the walls of the cave.” He shrugged.

“So don’t you remember it?”

“Not completely,” he admitted sheepishly. “Besides that cave is the entrance way to our realm. We can’t scale the mountains and hope to reach Grishma’s land."

“Interesting.”

It was still difficult to believe the truth behind all that he was saying but I somehow I knew he was the only option I had at the moment, so I followed him.

After almost an hour of walking with no luck, I collapsed on the snow, panting from the exertion. My fingers were numb inside my gloves and I didn’t know if my toes existed anymore. The boots did nothing to block out the cold and my socks were soaking wet.

He sat down on a rock beside me. “You could still go home, you know.”

“Next option please,” I grunted, tugging on my gloves. 

“What are you doing?” He grabbed my arm so suddenly that I was too stunned to react.

There was a second of a pause where I could feel the warmth from his fingers seeping into my skin through the exposed portion of my wrist where he had grabbed me. And it was enough to break my reverie. 

“Just seeing if any finger has fallen off.” I snatched back my hand.

“Let me see.” He reached for my hand again but I balled them against my chest. 

“I get it. No touchy-touchy.” He rolled his eyes, demanding my hand once again. The use of the baby phrase cracked me up.

“Fine. Can I have your hand please?” He made a gesture like taking off a black felt hat at an evening party.

“Now that’s like a gentleman,” I winked, putting my gloved hands in his big palms.

He removed the gloves gently and the sudden burst of chilly air made my teeth chatter. The tips of my fingers were pale.
“Damn. You are freezing!”

He removed his own gloves and engulfed my little hand in his, rubbing his thumb along the edge of my knuckles. The warmth of his skin felt good and I could see the pink colour return to my fingers slowly. But the heat wasn’t only creeping up my fingers. My face felt warm, even against the cold draft.

“You can let go now,” I mewed a weak protest.

“Not yet. Can’t risk you losing a finger.” He made a sudden movement and before I could register a scream, he had tugged open the buttons on his coat and my hands were flat against the pulsating warmth of his chest. The saner part of my mind retreated at that moment because every other instinct in me wanted to stay that way forever. My fingers grazed the fluffy hair at the centre of his chest gently, gliding along the smooth curves, afraid to stray too far and yet tempted to savour our proximity. He inhaled sharply when I scooted closer—our thighs touching and my face just inches away from his neck. 
The hunger in his eyes was evident. The earthy hue was intensifying into something fluid, like flowing silt. He wanted me to do so much more to him—I wanted to do so much more to him—

Toooiiiweeeweeweewewe!

The shrill whistle like a birdcall made us both jump apart. My cautious eyes scanned for possible threat. There was a person standing behind Aadi, her steely grey eyes fixated on me. The hostility was evident in her gaze.

I was up on my feet, ready to protect myself from any possible sign of attack. Aadi flipped around, spotted the woman and in a flash was in front of me, his arms held out on either side, shielding me. The woman however made no move to attack. She simply kept staring at us.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to Aadi and he relaxed slowly.

I came to stand beside him and noticed that she looked quite old. Her skin was wrinkled like clothes fresh out of the spin dryer. Pale and haggard, her eyes were set deep into dark wrinkly crevices but there was something about them that made me uneasy. She was wearing only a half torn loose cloak over an equally tattered white yarn wrapped casually around her willowy form and didn’t seem to feel cold at all—so definitely not human.

“What are you?” Aadi asked pointedly.

She just looked at me in response— hostility shining clearly. Aadi put his arm around me protectively and dragged me closer. Her pale lips curled into a smirk. “I am Dishari. I show the way.”

“So, you could help us find the right way, right?” I asked hopefully.

“Wrong.” she whispered ominously, looking at no one in particular. Her form started flickering in and out.

“What’s wrong?” I squinted, trying to see her.

She pointed a scrawny finger at me.

“But—”

She had vanished into thin air.

We looked around but there was no sign that she was ever there. No footprints on the snow, not even where she was standing.

“What did she mean?” 

“These predictions are cryptic. Most often they mean something else than what it seems like on face,” Aadi mused. There was a deep crease running down the middle of his forehead.

“So what does this one mean?”

“That we have to find out.” He picked up his gloves from the rock and tossed mine towards me.

“So—” I caught the gloves. They were soaking wet. There was no way I was going to wear that so I stuffed it into my pocket instead.

“So, we go ahead as we were.”

Aadi didn’t seem very concerned but I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling out of me. Something somewhere was not happening right and I felt like I was privy to some things I shouldn’t have felt.

🍂🍁🍂