A Healing Discovery

Elysian couldn't fall asleep and it wasn't his insomnia that kept him awake.

It was too humid in his comforter. The air conditioning was broken. He was having a hard time just breathing properly. His discomfort led him to walk around the house.

He found himself in the attic. At least it was cooler up here. The smell of fresh polish greeted him. His eyes fell on a gap between the pile of boxes and he spotted something that looked like a door handle. His mood shifting from mild annoyance to some excitement, he began to set the boxes aside. 

He laughed as he picked up each box, the puns written on them tickling his funny bone. Equanim, his brother, was bored when they were moving and so a marker and these boxes were his weapon of choice to kill the boredom. The last one which said ‘Donut worry’ with a donut drawn on it when put away revealed what Elysian was anticipating-a small hidden door. 

Unable to contain the suspense, he held the door handle. It was so fragile, half of it crumbled down into saw dust. Trying to prevent further damage, he pushed it open with caution. His brain automatically played those horror movie sound effects as it deliberately opened with a raspy noise as if pleading for water.

He had to crawl through, it was that tiny of an entrance. “Attic inception!”, he exclaimed as he stood up once he was inside.
It was a tight space, circular in shape. There were foldable stairs right in the center, the trap door on the curved ceiling allowing a beam of white light to cast a shadow of the ladder on the floor.

He climbed away and found himself on the rooftop.

The clear night sky stared back at him with its million eyes. Enraptured by its beauty, he ended up losing his balance.

He skidded down the slanting roof but before he was entirely thrown off into the air, he escaped from the chances of a cracked skull when an effortlessly gentle force pulled him up.

It was like salt in the wound when he was just recovering from the incident that another shockwave hit him unexpectedly.

She was magically next to him.

“Meredin! You need to stop giving me heart attacks”, he held his head in his hands, his heart in his throat, beating at the speed of a Japanese bullet train.

Meredin was his best friend. But she was a mystery. She usually showed up only when he was in distress. He had stopped questioning her psychic predictions and absurd advices. He actually found that her out of the blue suggestions always made him happier.

She merely said “You overreact”, cheerfully unrolling a bubblegum pink mat. "Up for a midnight picnic?"

“You showed up from the chimney last week!”, he said indignantly, still breathing heavily. He  lay on his back, facing the night sky.

Her familiar redolence of jasmine brought his breathing back to normal.

"The sky looks like an inverted bowl of abandoned cereal at night", she declared happily. Then, she proceeded to sing and hum the entire soundtrack of Narnia for the next 30 minutes. He didn’t mind.

He could see the sky hugging the earth, curling up above it. The immensity of the universe drew his headache out and Meredin's soft humming made him drowsy.

He opened his eyes to see plush clouds sprinkled around in the daylight. The edges of his vision were allayed. “The clouds are the kids, the sky is their playground”, he heard her say.

But the sleepiness got knocked right out of him when he looked at her.

She’d grown wings! Majestic ones made up of autumn leaves of warm shades. Plum, maroon, red, yellow, orange, brown-you name it. Her fairy like dressing style shone with their presence

This made him smile. Her wings fell apart as he did so, the leaves blowing away all over the place. A new pair bloomed into place, this time made with flowers of colours he’d never even seen before.

Suddenly, all his doubts were clarified. It gave him a feeling that one has when they put their glasses on and all the blur converges into focus. He finally knew.

Whenever she was around, his mind was at ease

Things decelerated down

And placed him in a bubble of peace

It was as though a black hole nearby was bending the time

Serendipity always followed after her

Soothing like the sound of a wind chime

He finally knew she was his Guardian

Sent from a spiritual world

Her mere presence was elysian

For her healing energy swirled

Showering him with love and light

This was revealed to him at her winged sight