Chapter Nine: Bare
The night air blew gently; the room was black, like the star-less night sky. I could see, from where I lay that the moon hung in the sky, so carefree, unlike me. The rooftops of Amber, lit by her light. I rolled my head away from the window so it faced the ceiling. I looked at the cracks that resembled the roots of a tree. So many different paths...like life, it was a shame, that we only learnt when we had taken the wrong one when it was too late. Was unleashing the Sands a wrong path? I had killed so many people yet through that I had learnt that I had loved someone...and then she was taken away. I turned my head to my right. I saw two wide green eyes blink at me.
"Are you watching me?" I asked through the darkness.
"Uh-uh," blinked the eyes and I saw the outline of Shirin's head shake slowly, she was curled up tightly in a ball.
"Were you thinking?" I asked.
"Uh-huh," the eyes blinked with the outline of the head nodding.
"What about?" I asked, I knew, from the sound of the movement of our cover, that she was shrugging. I turned my head back to the ceiling. "What path did you take?" I asked. She looked at the ceiling.
"The one without the proper directions and the one where you can't turn back," murmured Shirin, the cover was brought right up to under her nose.
"That sounds a little bit bleak for you," I murmured. There was silence except for the wind outside that swept through the deserted streets. Shirin's voice interrupted the silence.
"They never liked me..." she murmured. I turned my head to look at her; she remained looking at the ceiling.
"Who are you talking about?" I asked. It was the dead of night, so I wasn't sure why we were talking.
"The warriors, but they couldn't just kill me," she murmured. She was silent again, this time it was I who broke the silence.
"When I first met you, you weren't really being yourself were you?" I asked remembering the time I had spent with her in the library. She was quiet then and had tamed her lively personality...but with time, when we were in the desert, she had emerged from her shell to show what she was truly like.
"Sometimes people find my actual personality annoying...I thought if I acted so quietly and tried to speak really well then you would want to be my friend and would want to help me. Of course, you probably guessed that I wasn't really educated, not with the way I could barely read anything," she murmured in reply. She was still looking at the ceiling, blinking occasionally.
"You don't have many friends I take it then," I said. She shook her head.
"A lot of the time, I have to change who I really I'm to be liked...I don't like doing that because I loose the real me," she murmured. "You're really are lucky...you have friends and family that care for you and love you. I wish some cared and loved me," she murmured so apathetically. She finally admitted it. I knew that what she had said was something she really did truly mean. I had never seen her like this...she had been open with me plenty of times before but this time I knew she had just left her soul and true emotions bare and defenceless. She had hid herself from the truth and had hid everyone else from it, but she couldn't hide what she really wanted anymore. Did she really feel so unloved, rejected and neglected? Maybe she had got so used to this feeling that she was blind to my emotions for her.
"I love you as a friend and I do care for you," I said through the darkness. I saw something in her eyes...a slight feeling of not being able to understand the words. Disbelief almost, they had never been said to her before.
"You do?" she murmured. I nodded, she sensed I was nodding. "Why?" she asked, quite baffled. She honestly hadn't been expecting me to say such a thing. "Is it because I am helping you make Farah remember?"
"No, and it isn't sympathy because of your unknown past either. I like the fact that you are optimistic and uplifting, if I had done this by myself, then it is likely I would be really depressing right now," I said. I looked at her. I could see a smile growing and he eyes becoming soft.
"Thanks," she murmured quietly. I wasn't sure how I felt now; did I feel closer to Shirin? On the other hand, did I feel somewhat worried now, because the last time I had loved and cared for someone and had let them know this, they betrayed me? "You're the first person who has ever said anything nice to me," she murmured. I looked at her, I assumed what she said wasn't true, just some sort of thing she was saying to me to make me feel good. However, I could see in her green eyes, that what she said was true. I did trust her, she trusted me; I was the first person she had ever trusted.