Asparas – the green moon – lit the courtyard of the monastery as usual. The moonlight always reached here first, since its terrace touched the sky. In the winters the management concurred spells to keep the clouds at bay, and the visibility clear. And in every sense, summer – the season nowadays – was awesome, never too cold, nor hot.

  The hardworking geniuses though, could always find a way to flow streaks of sweat in the near freezing temperature of the summer nights. Their purple robes often hung down leaving their upper body bare – like the two boys practising in the courtyard. It was no necessity; they just wanted to feel the chills of the wind.

  Shin perpendicular to the Femur, and spine parallel to it, they held a perfect stance which had long since been ripped out from their regime. Today was just a day with special conditions.

  “Hey! You are gonna form a puddle of sweat here.” Aurus cursed, straining his tube to the utmost. The voice, however, squeaked more than it shouted, because, well he couldn’t just shout after midnight near the master’s housing.

  Besides Aurus, Zephyr just stared at the stars which always moved in a set path in the sky. Present in almost all colors, they looked like handpicked decorations. But since long, Zephyr believed them to be symbols of powers – hovering with whatever potency was left in them.

  “I can’t control sweat can I?” Zephyr responded in his calming, dense voice. Aurus almost didn’t hear it, and had to strain and pick his ear up to listen.

  In a decade they had spent together, Aurus believed they could never be friends. Zephyr never fit in the norm. Just yesterday, he was goofing around with three girls in the market. Aurus would love to call out Zephyr for that but he knew Zephyr was just being… Zephyr.

  “If they like spending time with me, there is no problem with that. Don’t worry about me,” Zephyr had responded yesterday in the market, after calming Aurus who made a fuss on how the girls were two years older than them.

  “Tch,” Aurus clicked his tongue, and dug his molars over each other. A futile attempt to forget the weird miasma Zephyr carried with himself. How could he forget him, when he was just beside him.

  A slow turn of neck from Aurus, to his right, and his lips twitched to form a tiny orifice. He closed them again, measuring his words one last time, as he asked, “What are you here for? This training is pretty useless for you isn’t it?“

  There was a much long moment of silence, and then Aurus noticed a heavy swallow from Zephyr. No way he could have been wrong, as the light skin of Zephyr highlighted the green light and made him visible – like under a spotlight.

  “I just couldn’t sleep.” Zephyr responded, and again Aurus barely caught it. Had there been a single chirp from the soft Rasavas – the morning birds – he would have missed it. And what did Zephyr mean by: couldn’t sleep? All he did was frown when he was sitting amidst bundles of books, or smile like a goof when he was outside the room. All of them needed little to no sleep anyway.

  Now in all its glory, Zephyr could feel the intense gaze from Aurus, and his presence besides him. Aurus had almost pervaded his internal visuals, and broken his perfect contemplation of the stars. As if he flinched from a jumpscare, seeing Aurus and just Aurus inside his mind, he almost broke his stance. But then his breath halted, when he was reminded why he was here. He adjusted himself back again.

  Both of them waited in silence – Aurus staring at Zephyr, and Zephyr avoiding his gaze. Rasava’s chirps resounded in the ecosphere, who were one of the rare birds that dwelt at the peak of Karaka mountain range. Their chirps marked the dawn of morning, and under no time the sun would rise above the horizon. Any minute now, the other students would begin to gather in the training halls, trek down the mountain, or hoard in the library.

  None of this, under any circumstances, was of benefit for both Aurus and Zephyr who couldn’t move from their places.

  Aurus’ eyes shifted to the right, inspecting their junior’s dorms, which were linearly stacked to several hundred meters. Zephyr too, was forced to think of the problem at hand. He didn’t know about Aurus, but he couldn’t move from the center of the courtyard which would soon be buzzing with his juniors. They could definitely ask him to move, as this wasn’t even where they were supposed to be. They had large housings to accommodate themselves, and their courtyard was enough. Even if he could stand against the juniors, he couldn’t stand against the teachers without a strong argument.

  What would be that strong argument? – Zephyr had begun rummaging through his mental rolodex for solutions.

  Aurus, on the other hand, could already feel the drops of sweat rolling down his face. But the cold wind massacred them halfway, leaving the chills of the aftermath over his face. He jerked his face to his right, and his eyes swept over the wooden dorms to the humongous expanse of the sky. His eyes lingered there long, and shifted from here to there searching for something at the horizon. Though he himself knew this desperate attempt wouldn’t make his wish come true.

  Zephyr had just relaxed from his train of thought, as he caught Aurus' weird movements from the corner of his view. He made a soft turn towards him, and he followed his gaze to the horizon. Not to say less, he couldn’t believe what he saw. What, why and how could Aurus be gazing there? Did he know? Since when?

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  Zephyr’s stomach twirled in disbelief, and much worse was the fact that he couldn’t think of any possible explanation. This should’ve been exclusive to himself, but now Aurus was staring in the direction, searching for something. Zephyr had been quite out of it today, because of the matter at hand, so he didn’t notice. But now, if he rolled back the tapes of memories since yesterday… no, last week. Aurus had been acting weird.

  Zephyr wanted to ask from him; he wanted to know the answer. How did Aurus get to know about this? This could only be a fluke. The rare moments in life that happen out of nowhere. Zephyr mumbled in his low voice, “Au-”, before he cut himself out. He couldn’t just ask him about this. What if he was wrong about it all?

  The juniors had started to gather out in the corridors, and no surprise, they were sneaking peeks at their seniors standing in the middle of their courtyard. Of course, they couldn’t be blatant about it. They would sneak from behind the pillars, gaze at their backs from behind, or peek out of their windows. Nonetheless, Zephyr and Aurus might’ve to move now. In about one Ara – the ninety-sixth part of a day – the teacher would arrive.

  From the absence of any visible source, and outside the understanding of any law the Zorians had defined, loud sounds of bell encompassed everything – out of nowhere.

  With the very first bell, Zephyr’s eyes stretched the farthest they could. He moved from his posture, and flailed his hands in the air, as if he had heard bell tolls of death. This couldn’t be happening right now, shit! – he wailed internally, as he vanished from his place. The bell tolls calmed, and nobody realized where he had gone. Aurus, still, just stared at the horizon, and the juniors just peeked at Aurus.

  Zephyr woke up in the acrid smell of a compact room. His bed sheet was coiling around one of his legs up to his stomach. His phone was quietly resting over his laptop – now tired from hours of alarm ringing. The first thing that greeted Zephyr was the view of his ceiling with a distasteful color of grey, and a fan swivelling under it. The door of his room was shut tight, and the only window in the room was closed with curtains, which made the room dark.

  Zephyr smacked his forehead, and lazily dragged it down his face. He had died yet another time, and it was never pleasant to die. Even if he could start again.

  He pushed his legs into the air, and his body was propelled up on the bed. He crossed his legs over the mattress; his hands pushed inside it. In rabid beats, his thoughts surged, and wanted to leave no stone unturned on the matter. How could he die just like that was beyond his understanding, and for the next couple days he had a question to answer. Something to scribble about, in the boring college lectures.

  He sighed looking at the mess of his room, tilted his head in dismay. Nonetheless, he still got out of the bed and started to organize the cluttered clothes, or stationary, or just the crumbs of bread he often ate.

  Machetes and their evolutions – He picked up the book, which was fluttering from the puffs from the fan directly over it. He gave it a reminiscing look, and vowed to himself to use a machete next time. He always loved guns, and they were indeed awesome. But the author of the book seemed to have a thing or two, for Machetes. And without a doubt, his passion was contagious.

  He resisted the urge to toss the book to the bed, and just moved to the bedside table to place it beside his laptop. This was the best place he could keep it right now – a place he would surely come by. He wanted to issue another book today, and he had to give this back before that. No way in hell, was he gonna forget his laptop, and now he wasn’t gonna forget the book either.

  For the next fifteen minutes, he sauntered across the room, but he did make it livable. It wasn’t perfect, as he didn’t see any difference in either – piling the clothes over his chair, or putting them inside the cabinet.

  The clock hit nine, and the phone rang an alarm. Zephyr was standing just beside the phone, so he swiped the alarm off. In his usual fashion, he walked to his desk, and as the room was nothing more than a ten by ten, it didn’t take him long to reach it. It had a hardbound, purple diary lying over it which smelled like roses. The pen holder, his semester books, or the sticky notes– they all were organized at their respective corners and edges. Only the dairy was lavishly tilted at the center of the desk.

  Not like a ritual, but a necessity Zephyr held his head with both his hands, and cracked his neck. Then he stretched his shoulders with a couple pops, and proceeded to do this wherever he possibly could. Opening his diary wasn’t much different from entering inside the cage in an arena, and Zephyr would actually argue for it being worse off.

  He was a regular in the downtown gym, and he knew the cage from inside out. Heck, he had been inside so much that he could be called a caged man. There is blood inside the cage, and in the downtown gyms which aren’t the types civilized men like to visit. The blood, the smoke, or the sweat – it makes them rusty in their throat. Even these kinds of cages have a fairness in them; your opponent beats you up, but you get the chance to beat him up, fair and square.

  With this dairy though, you don’t get a chance to fight back.

  Mark Huberman, Age 51 – the diary read on some middle page, Zephyr opened it on. The name, and the age were followed by a cross – all of them, from the first page.

  “119) Mark Huberman, Age 51

  120) Ark Crismony, Age 45

  121) Dina Willphone, Age 38 …”

  When Zephyr saw he hadn’t marked the last – one hundred and twenty nine – with a cross, he grabbed a pen from the holder, and completed the deed. For a moment, he paused and looked at the diary wondering if he should mark the one hundred and thirtieth right away or save the work for later. Swearing on his humanity, Zephyr didn’t want to mark the one hundred thirtieth person. But it was a much needed work for social upliftment.