The Blue Silhouette

A blue, candle was standing all alone at a wooden candle stand , placed in the middle of a small round table. Its wax was accumulating at its base like the many frozen tears shed in the memories of long-awaited moments of that ethereal unison. The moments which were paused between the loving gaze of their tearful eyes. They were quiet , but their silence was talking to each other. There was no question or answer in the mute conversation. It felt as if they had already been talking for centuries before and now there’s nothing left to talk about….
…

How desperate has he been for those moments to arrive, since he fell in love with her silhouette…!

…
He was new in the town and didn’t have much acquaintances since his posting . he had rented an old house used to once belonged to a famous poet.

One night ,at eleven past eleven, he saw a silhouette of a woman across the window , he used to sit and work . He peeped through the window and there was no one out there. He immediately opened the door and went out to look for her , but she was gone.



It happened quite a few times and stopped. Then every night, he waited for the silhouette to appear in the window, but it didn’t. Sometimes he had to struggle to sleep and even had to take the pills to help him sleep.So he deemed it as the hallucinations and forgot.

One night the silhouette appeared and beckoned him to come out. He immediately opened the door and went out. He saw a woman dressed  in  blue gown with her face hidden behind a delicately laced veil. She was gracefully stepping on to a paved path leading out- side the town.

He followed her as if he was tide up with a string .

It was dark and chilly night of December with  slight freezing drizzles .The remote hills were looking like many silhouettes of the women dressed in dark gowns , standing tall under the cloudy veil of the sky studded with twinkling stars.

She entered into a front lawn of a small blue cottage decorated with blue flowers and left the door opened behind her. He followed her inside the cottage. The cottage was furnished with old-fashion furniture. She led her into a small room up stair and sat on the piano which was  nearly occupying the whole room. She pointed to one of the two chairs around a small round table with a  candle stand in the middle. He sat down like a small obedient child.

She started playing a sad song on the piano. The song was so sad that it seemed as if everything in the room was crying . When the song finished she got up and sat beside him on the table with the candle crying in the middle. He could see the tears in her dark blue eyes. He wanted to wipe the tears with his hands but he felt as if his hands were frozen. The veil on her face was already soaked in  tears and was sticking to her delicate lips. He desperately wanted to place a gentle kiss on the delicate contour of her lips but he was too  scared to do so.

Both sat silently and it seemed as if centuries have swept passed. The window pans were picturing the  snow in frame.

 After a long time, she got up, brought an old book from an old shelf and handed it over to him, saying ‘The dawn is approaching” her accent was ancient and her voice was mellow. Then she pointed to the door.

He took the diary and sadly left the place.

Upon reaching his lodging, he immediately opened the book. It seemed like a diary with something written in beautiful hand-writing . Alas! He noticed that all the words were smudged in some dried liquid.

Next night he waited for the silhouette to appear at 11:11, but it didn’t. he kept waiting for the subsequent nights but no one came.

One day he couldn’t resist and asked an old watchman at the corner of the street, about the blue cottage in the woods. The watchman got shocked as no one seem to remember about that cottage anymore. The watchman hesitated to go there and told him about the route. When he reached there , he got shocked to see the condition of the abandoned lodging. There were no blue flowers in the lawn. The door was jammed tightly and there was no sign of life at all..

Disappointed he, went back and told the watchman the whole story, yet he hid the part of the blue book.

The watchman told him the legend of a beautiful young woman used to live in that cottage with her old mother. She used to hide her face behind the veil. One day a young man fell in love with her. He used to write poetry in her love and send her. He always wanted to see her beautiful face but she was hesitant .One night she invited her in her home. She asked her to sit beside her and then played a melodious song out of her own poetry written in her diary . Then they sat on a table with a lit candle in the middle of it. The woman had tears in her eyes and her veil was already soaked in tears, sticking to her delicate lips. He passionately removed her veil and was about to kiss her when he noticed her cleft lips in the light of candle. He became scared and immediately left her. After the incident  the woman never saw him again. It was said that she used to sit awake in even in the snowy night to wait for her beloved to send her another poem, but he never came back. One night she became seriously sick and in a few days died miserably. It was  said that her cleft lips turned blue upon her death. Her sad mother buried her in the front lawn of their cottage. People could still hear the sound of  piano coming from the upper story of the cottage.

That night at eleven past eleven, he  found himself alone in his room trying to read the smudged words in the candle light but there was no success!


He kept the dairy in the drawer and tried to forget everything.
......

One night he was sleeping when he felt as if someone has tried to wake him up.
He looked around but there was no one in the room. It was eleven past eleven , almost. Undecidedly, he went to look for the diary . It was still in the drawer.  He immediately opened it to read and tried hard to make some sense out of the smudged words but he couldn’t .He became sad and tears welled up in his eyes.

Then it happened that no sooner did a tear fell on the diary, than the words in the diary started becoming visible to him. He became over whelmed with joy and curiosity. Soon he was reading the enchanted poetry written with the depth of love. Under the spell, he got up while reading it and automatically turned towards the door.

It was dark and gloomy outside with no sign of stars on the cloudy sky. There were light heaps of snow melting in the warmth of March.

Unconsciously he reached in front of the blue cottage and stepped inside the front lawn. No sooner his feet touched the ground , than everything came to life. He could see the tufts of blue flowers smiling in the welcoming wind of spring.

He plucked a flower and immediately reached the door , opened it and went inside .He was not scared at all.  He could hear the sound of music coming form upstairs. He climbed the stairs in rush and reached the small room with the piano.

She was there, dressed in blue, absorbed in playing a beautiful song on the piano. This time she was also singing. Her voice was clear and beautiful.

 He stood near the door so that she couldn’t see him standing there. He was trembling with the joy .The diary fell down from his hand .With the noise, she turned her beautiful veiled face towards the door and noticed him. He leaned down and picked up the diary then slowly stepped forward and gave the diary to her along with the blue flower. Her eyes smiled in the dim light of distant candle ,with the pleasure of having read by someone.

“I have been waiting for you”. She murmured

He extended his hand towards her. Soon he felt the soft touch of her beautiful fingers on his .They were cold like ice. She got up and stood in front  him. He kept staring her deep blue eyes until he felt like being drowned in the sweet mystery her gaze. Then he gently removed her veil and put his warm trembling lip on her cold ones. He kissed her passionately while tears kept  filling his eyes. He was deeply in love with her and never wanted the kiss to end. In fact he thought he would be a happiest person if he happen to die in those moments of ecstasy.

The moments paused  under the spell of their soulful kiss……They felt as if they were sailing over the depth of deep blue sea...

When they separated their hearts were full of peace and glory. It was the magic of the kiss that the cleft of her lips was gone forever and they were blooming like wild blue flowers, freshly bathed in the night dew.

He didn’t remember what happened next. Probably he fell into a deep sleep or perhaps he actually died. When he woke up he found himself lying in a bed in  another room of the cottage.

It was drizzling outside. She was sitting beside him with the diary in her delicate hands She looked towards the window and uttered.”The dawn is approaching”. He didn’t want to leave her , but he followed his instinct. When he reached the door, he heard her saying “Thank you”. She was holding the flower against her bosom. Her beautiful lips were  without the veil and  were yielding a gorgeous smile.

No one knows for how many nights they kept meeting like that, but the house of the poet was also declared to be haunted since the mysterious disappearance of the  gentleman residing there!

People of the town found no sign of evidence of involvement of the ghost of the blue cottage..but they still assume that they are still meeting somewhere in the heaven of their  own world as the blue tufts of flowers still grow.. and… they can still hear her singing while playing piano , late night sometimes!!!!!!!






SW