Molten Rings

The azan for Fajr along with the cold rustling of air swept past the hollows of our room when I jumped into bed. I lay beside him carefully not to make any signs with my claws on the silk spread all over and also not to wake himself up. Softer than my fur, I felt the warmth of a female cat rubbing against my skin. 

As usual, when I strolled the entire house, I saw my keepers screaming at each other. I stood there to understand their words and why they uttered them at dusk which marked their twenty-five years of togetherness. 

“I gave all my jewels and each rupee that I earned just for you to drain it in some business’ that you didn’t even have an iota of idea on.” 

“Yes, scream as loud as you want. For god’s sake, I was trying to make something out of it.” 

“Before my money was there, but now only the dust remains in your pockets and your hands. And the disgust for you runs through all my blood that you sucked on all these years.” 

As she said, he hurled the furniture towards her. But it mercifully decided to miss its target by flying above her head. 

Picking up the force, now with words, “Are you able to understand that I have not wasted the money on liquor or prostitutes? But, with all my might I am trying to build  something for us.” 

“At least, you would have got something in return if you had spent my money on them.” 

Then, they both shouted words that I had heard almost everywhere, in street fights, in casual conversations with a laugh, while someone was dead, and even during intimate moments between men and women. 

Though I can understand the language of humans, these words never revealed their mystery to me. How these people can use the same words to express every emotion?

* 

His body was against the bed and his parents’ words not piercing through his sleep. Or else, is he pretending to be asleep just to free himself from the chains of choosing sides just to prove that his love and loyalty lie with them? 

The gift, a ring engraved with the initials of his parents, sat proudly with the thought that it was going to represent the 25 years of their being together. 

He bought it a week before and showed it to me saying, 

“Next week, my parents are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. I bought these rings for them. My father would wear the one with my mother’s initials and my mother the other one. It looks good, doesn’t it” 

I blinked seeing the ring and miaowed. Considering that as my approval, he wrapped that and kept it in his drawer. He carried me to the pond inside the mosque after that for the first time. I didn’t have any religious inclination, but seeing a pond full of fish paw-length and not waiting for humans to throw the excess only after they ate, I thought of suggesting that place to my friends who didn’t have any keepers as I have. 

I stepped away from the stone steps where he was sitting and throwing the food he bought for the fish. He was giggling at my attempt to catch some fish wetting my nose and flooding my mouth with the green water. Though my act went in vain, I was heartened at the sight of him embracing our presence. 

When I came back to sit near his bare cold feet he stroked me gently and said, 

“We will buy fish for you on our way back home”, he kissed my head. 

* 

 Now, this boy, whose side will he choose in this feud between his beloveds? Master is the one who brought me here when I was lying injured and bloody on the cushion of his car. But, now mistress feeds me daily and takes good care of me. Luckily, I don’t speak their language and even if I am forced to choose between my master and mistress, I would choose my mistress because she feeds me. 

Though, in the future, if I have to depend on my master for food, he will forgive me just because I am an animal.

“Poor fellow! What he would do? He can’t think like us”, he would say. 

Whatever disputes and differences humans have, they all would treat an animal like me all the same and they never forget to feed us. 

All humans don’t have such easy ways with loyalty and choosing sides. 

“Do you think they will accept this gift today with their hatred for each other?” he asked me after we had our lunch. 

I wanted to say, "Yes, they will accept it any day." But all I could do was miaowing and he took that as a NO.

He made up his mind to return the gift to the shop and as a consolation, either for him or to me or even to the ring, he said, 

“I can’t give this gift to them any other day. This is their special day, their 25th anniversary. Even if I give it, this gift won’t matter to them. I don’t want that to happen to my gift” 

The fear that his gift would be denied importance and the weird thought that 26 is not a greater and better number than 25 showed the doors to the desperate ring waiting to be worn. 

* 

In the room that stood as a witness for all the bursts of rage yesterday, my mistress held me up in her chest, rubbing my head and ears with her palm. 

The glowing peace in her eyes and my master’s intoxicating smell on her neck and shirt never cared about the day not being special. The dryness of her lips didn't bear any trace of the words she screamed yesterday.

“When and how did they make peace with each other? They could have been like this yesterday”, he furiously said after the lunch where master slurped the rice as if its rawness was stripped by the warmth of her wife’s slender hands. 

 The burning coldness of a human heart at the moment of a shared smile, an intimate memory, sleep, rain, or just nothing warms itself, breaks free of all the grudges, and becomes fragile. It always does. 

They breathed and moved around each other as they came into this world today together stripped of all their memories and sins like little infants. 

The soles of my mistress’ feet reddened as the blood dried on snow after she climbed the temple, at the top of the hill, barefoot. Master asked breathing heavily, 

“You didn’t get tired? How without breaking a sweat did you climb all this distance?” 

She grinned and they sat on a rock outside the temple. Wind wrestled with people to knock themselves down.

They didn’t rush to pray after climbing the hill or even they didn’t want to. Their son waved to them to come inside and commanded God for a favor. 

“Don’t make them fight on their next anniversary!” 

Keeping the sweat beads and the red of the feet’s soles tucked away in a holy memory of each other and this moment, they calmly waited to descend through the roughness of the hill. 

THE END