Black Book Updated!

Well, Sidhi of these quarters, I'll see you next week.'

She patted my shoulder and off I went. Time to go home. Time to muse and reflect.

* * *

I munched a cookie and didn't know where to start with my thinking. Instead, I stared at the world around me, barely noticing the heavy backpack stuffed with books on my back, chewing and attempting to not lose a single crumb. Such good cookies! Sidhi should have gone into business. I'm sure I would have camped at an outlet dedicated to selling these biscuits.

I turned onto a main road, emerging at last from the woods. A happy world breathed behind me and I couldn't help but feel that the world facing me, this one of the people I knew and the others I'd never met, was one sad world. One didn't have to be psychic to recognise it. Certainly I'd known about that sadness walking into the woods but I felt that sadness now that I was back. Sidhi had talk about commonness, about how people are similar to each other, and possible reasons for why she'd chosen me as a 'disciple,' as she called it, completely eluded me. Either way, I liked her and knew I would be visiting the following week. If only to eat cookies, I greedily thought and I just had to laugh.

* * *

I didn't call out as I entered home. I knew I would be alone. I think that up until then I was always tense walking through the front door. I suppose I longed for someone to greet me, to ask me how my day had been, and yet I knew I'd continue to arrive home to silence. Mum and dad would be off working, my brother would be with his friend, and that was the first day I can remember when I was openly glad I had the house to myself. I'd have the entire evening to mull over my time with Sidhi and lingering over what she'd have to share next week. I was near tingling over the prospects. I threw my bag in my room and down my hand dove into the cookie bag and I frowned. My fingers had touched something hard. I wiggled my fingers and gripped it, drawing it out slowly. It was a necklace, in tarnished silver, the links two shades away from black, with a red jewel at the end. It just dangled casually in the air and I almost laughed when I noticed the biscuit crumbs clinging to it. I mean there was something funny about a necklace just rolling around between the biscuits but I couldn't laugh. The necklace, the jewel; they looked valuable and I just stared at the jewel. I knew it wasn't a ruby. Mum had recently dragged me along with her on one of her ring-buying expeditions and this was a colour I had never seen before and I just knew it wasn't a ruby. Since when did rubies come almost in the size of golf balls? Since when did any jewel come in that size, I pondered, and it was only then I remembered Sidhi...

To be continued later. I updated to let you guys know I hadn't forgotten...

Yoomi