And you did it anyway

Looking As You Are By Embrace

I told the Devil and the deep blue sea to hide
I thought that you were after them
I was right
But it's a picture I'll always keep in mind
Where you say I've never been even liked
For anything truly mine

And you did it - looking as you are
Looking as you are

Love enters, and leaves you through your eyes
You threw away the only thing that I like
And ought tell ya, that things will be alright
It never really seems that way, late at night

When you did it looking as you are
Looking as you are

Now I know, that the world's not waiting for you, nor for me
Now I know that the world gets heavy, will change?

'Cause you did it looking as you are
looking as you are

Now you're gone, I stand on my own

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I am begining today's blog entry with a song. Usually, it is at the end. For a change, I thought. The song set the tone today. I want to capture the mood so that I will remember. For a nostalgic person, it is important.

Finally, I managed to end on time and reached home by 7pm. I have been working, sacrificing almost everything else so that I can get good stories done. I had a few top play already. Today, another one. Great. But I hardly know my colleagues, even though they had been friendly. The colleague sitting in front of me now rarely talks to me, because I made that so, by giving him cold shoulders. I don't know what my friends or what they are doing. Called a few intimate friends today. They are not reachable. Actions have consequences. I am reaping what I sow. Now finally, I want company. But I can't find them. I had a terrible night last night. I wanted to erase that memory. So being with a group of nice people whom I know love me would be good. Today it is a rude shock to me that I probably have nobody. A couple of months back, it was glad it was that way, nothing to take away my reporting time. Striking a balance is an art. I know not that art. Then He sent a kind soul to salvage a social inert like me so that I won't have to stay at home feeling like an idiot.

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Chapter 2: Here with you, here without you

The Flame of the Forest was in full bloom and the whole tree looked like it was on fire. It was the first thing that Elizabeth noticed when she looked out of her bedroom window. She loved it when it was the flowering season for her Flame Tree, when her tree was covered with scarlett flowers that could have been a million to her. When the wind blew and the leaves rustled, her flame tree shook, a few scarlett flowers fell, as if her tree had coughed out those flowers because it was choked full of them. Her room, she thought, had a kick-ass view. She laughed, covered her mouth and threw her head backwards. She was often a sight of a young and innocent girl, brimming with a potential that she would one day break into something, a sight that would often left many anxiously wondering what kind of a woman she would bloosom into. What that something would be, they wished they could know, just so that their curiosity could be satisfied.

“Look Ophelia! The tree is in flames – in fire-red flames!” She turned to Ophelia’s bed. It was neatly made. The new bed cover was without a crease, as if no one had slept on it before.

She must have gone down for breakfast already. She is early. Opps…better hurry. I don’t want to be late for school today, not today!

Elizabeth smiled and she felt something in her stomach did a little somersault. Something was going to happen that day, she felt it in the air, somehow.

Mrs Wong shut the car door after Elizabeth and Ophelia had gotten into the car. She waved to them, took a look at Ophelia. She smiled. A wave of warmth surged and enveloped her heart, making her feel relieved of a strange self-imposed anxiousness of wanting to reverse Ophelia’s fate or make it better as quickly as possible, whichever she could do first. She was conscious of the lightness she had been feeling the last few days as she watched Ophelia seated quietly at the back of car, looking settled, looking like she had found all the little pieces that were missing that would be holding a perfect picture together. Elizabeth sat beside Ophelia, looking like a pair of daughters of her own blood. Maybe she was too anxious for things to be fixed as quickly as possible, whatever that was broken, that she had played all this up in her mind by her wishful thinking, or this could be a very realistic picture, not dreamed up in her head. She didn’t know. She looked at Ophelia smiling. She smiled again. If she could know, she thought.

Mr. Wong looked at Ophelia’s reflection in the rear mirror. There was a hint of resentment and a hint of resignation he saw in her that were fading away and those were the last traces waiting to go as well. She looked like a strong girl, held together by an unfathomable depth of determination hidden under her quiet appearance. She was taking in such difficult circumstances with much graciousness, uncommonly found even among the wisest adults, he thought. Like someone had given him a nudge, he stopped his thoughts. He could continue to analyze her and know nothing about her or he could get to know her in the most traditional way, through conversations, for her sake, for his wife’s sake and maybe even for his sake. If he knew how, if he could know, he thought.