Coincidence

She positioned herself by the window, in solitude, her hands clasped around her legs and her eyes observing the world outside. She had her earphones plugged in, with her playlist on shuffle. She couldn't recover from the tragedy she had been through the past few days. Everything reminds her of them. She never planned her future from an orphan's point of view. She relied on her parents for everything.

Tears rolled down her soft cheeks as she tried to wipe them off. She couldn't. The tears of distress wouldn't stop flowing from her ocean eyes.

She returned to the present after a moment of self-pity, then aroused and walked over to the family photo hung above her father's study desk. She took a deep, shaky breath in and sighed.

She strolled around the house, hunting down memories. The vase her mother used to adore, her father's collection of magazines, and her mother's favorite sofa cushion. Everything she touched, reminded her of them. Just then, her eyes caught an old bag. It prompted her to do something she never thought of doing but felt like she should. She started packing. Phone, earphones, house keys, water bottle, polaroid camera, and an umbrella in case the weather would get in a playful mood. She jogged to the kitchen and made herself a simple sandwich which she wrapped in a foil and confined in her childhood tiffin box and shoved it in her bag. She zipped her bag up and grabbed her jeep's keys. She walked towards the temporarily abandoned jeep and found an old cloth. She gave it a little cleaning and after hopping on, a kickstart. It roared and took off on the journey to nowhere.

She rode it through the thick, unfinished roads, not knowing where she was driving to. She did not care to know. She wanted to go out in the open to distract herself from the drastic past. A few miles later, the road diverged into two. One led to another city, the other showed her to a mountain. She felt adventurous and took the rare, sandy road to a mysterious trip to a lesser-known heap of rocks.

The city traffic noises quietened down the deeper she rode into the woods. She made it half the way to the top in an hour. Her body and mind pleaded for a rest. She stopped her jeep and walked towards a rocky slope.

 Tired, she plopped down on a big rock, looked up at the sky, and squinted. The sun was a little too bright to let her lookup. It was as if it spoke to her. It told her not to give up. Like it shined, she will shine too. It will take good care of her loved ones. She should not stop in the middle of the path of her life even during such landslides. No matter how tired or at loss one is, they shouldn't give up.

She forced herself to stand up and tramped to where the route took her.

What she stopped amazed her to an extent that she was speechless. The long trek was worth the gift nature gave her. The breath-taking view of the city shook her soul. Not just her, anyone who would be standing there would be glaring and admiring the fantastic city view. She ensured it to be a confidentially conservant place. It was so mesmerizing, she decided to hold the thought of going further to the top to sit down here and explore. 

The vast landscape made the other mountains look like trivial hillocks. The time was now evening, so the sky was painted in natural hues of light blue and orange. The yellow bask rested its head on the floating, silver clouds. The shrubs below and around danced to the tune of soft whistles of the invisible, cool breeze. Skyscrapers which once seemed so humungous as if they might fall over her, now illumined the mind, appearing to it as miniature Lego models.

Behind her, the sky had dyed itself in layers of shades of pink. The slopes pretended for the eyesight like an easy path to trot on. The tall Palm tree branches swayed from left to right.

She felt a certain attachment to the place. As if, she and this place had a past. A connection or a relationship neither of them knew about. But they both loved it. And admired each other as though they had known one another for decades.

The clouds began to break apart. They started drifting away from the scenario. The sun descended at a leisurely pace. The sky's colors commuted. The pink-orangish-blue sky was now doused in the tints of black, dark grey from atop. A cluster of sparkling white celestial bodies showed up one by one beside the glowing lunar. They twinkled but appeared as if they were winking at her. She chuckled and smiled, winking back at the big ones that, according to her, were her lost loved ones; looking upon her from above.

She packed everything up and went back home. On the way, she couldn't stop thinking about how much a change of place can lift up someone's mood. How nature plays its tricks into turning a sad, lonely person into a contented, happy person. She felt a little alive. She felt as though they were never gone, it was just a normal day, and she was returning from extra classes, and not from a therapeutical hike.

She unlocked the door and placed her bag on the table and threw herself into the sofa. She decided to pen down her day in her journal. She sat by the study desk and opened a drawer when she felt a sudden urge to investigate the dusty, old mini shelf beneath. She finally owned it and, to her surprise, there lay an album full of her parent's pictures! Her hands trembling, she took the album and sat down on the sofa while flipping through each page. She tried to control her tears when a shock ran over her. She found a picture of her father at a place she seemed familiar with.

It was the mountain she returned back from! The tingling feeling while sitting on the green grass wasn't the pricks of the grass or the chillness in the atmosphere, it was this feeling of attachment! Now she realized why she felt she had seen this place before. Why everything there seemed like a Deja Vu!

She let out a soft laugh, still not believing that she stood at the place her father left his footprints long ago. She felt at peace there, for somewhere in her heart, her soul, her father covertly watched her, standing at a corner and was there with her, whom that moment she perceived as a loved acquainted, which still mattered more than the spectre reality.