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The darkness of the vast meadows of the north was the last thing one could have ever imagined by looking at the bright orange sun that had just come out from the behind of the distant mountains which were covered with the shiny white snow. It looked as though the life on earth had just begun and the sun had brought to the land a fresh breeze from the vast blooming meadows of the heaven. The high mountains stood below the sun as though they were some blinds that were just pulled down to let the life out. The gentle breeze wandering around was from the same side of the high mountains. It infused the ambience with a voice declaring the birth of a new season. The spring had just arrived.

The sorrow of the harsh winter had left the place for hibernation. Before leaving it had caused to make the land hard with dryness. The dryness was ironic - the frozen surface was covered with snow that would never melt. The ground below the snow had cracked out of lifelessness and the sharp needles of the then hanging flakes of ice on the rough branches of the trees spoke of the cruelty of this sorrow. This very sorrow had stopped all life and was merciless enough even to compel the sun to make the vast countryside look like a narrow gloomy cave.

But the season had changed now and the hardness melted into tears that went down into the deep and dry wounds of the land to sooth it, heal it and nourish it for a new life to begin. The pleasing calmness of the warm sun had started melting the snow and the water began to take form. The land below the white cover had begun feeling the touch of the caring hands of the light rays. The touch made the dry and hidden seeds just under the soil surface realize that their day had come and their long awaited dream will come true now. The seeds had dreamt of a life and this day was the day of their birth.

Very soon the whole openness was covered with greenery. The sun looking down gave an expression of a victory it had just achieved. It seemed to look much brighter and the brightness was because of the sheer joy it felt – the joy of helping the blossoming of life. The whole surrounding was covered with tiny plants that proclaimed the success of the sun. It was obvious they wanted to thank it and they were really getting ready to give the sun a feast as a thanksgiving. They were busy nurturing the tiny buds on their fragile and wet branches. They would very soon have flowers on them. And these astonishingly lovely flowers would treat the sun with a beautiful glimpse of what this thing beauty means. The meadow would very soon become a land spread with a carpet of purple flowers running very far into the end of sight – far into the eternal vastness of the land.

The vastness of the carpet had some unusual broken highs at exactly regular distances. They looked like the sharp lines of the perfection the natural structure of life had to offer. The breaks were there because they had to be there - to make the frame complete. They didn’t mean to distort the smoothness of the waving meadow. They were making the stretch more beautiful – they made the waves rise and fall and the flow looked complete with their presence.

At the top of one such rising wave was the most tender of all the plants there. The tenderness looked apparent from its elfin stem and its grace traveled from the start of its stem at the ground, making every curve of the stem a work of an artful nature, traveling up to its highest peak, seemingly as high as the mountains in the backdrop, and ending in the most shy stanza on earth – Florem Purpa.

Florem Purpa was the most beautiful of all the flowers under the sun. The beauty of its innocent petals, the beauty its soft body, the beauty of its whole surface always fresh with the tiniest of the dew drops on it, the beauty of it gorgeous skin – all these elevated the position of Purpa above the rest of the flowers. Purpa was well known in every direction – as far to the unseen and unknown edges of the vastness. Purpa was respected and liked by every flower and the care was out of love for its beauty and dignity. There was not even a single breath of jealousy, for Purpa was more beautiful from inside – her heart was more beautiful than her slender body and only God knew how pure it was. There was no question about the superiority of Purpa. But her innocence of this superiority made her even more elegant and charmingly splendorous.

The new life was enchanting with every day filled with every color of life. The daily rising of the warm sun that filled more life into the air kept on increasing the charm of Purpa. The fresh breeze from the east would carry her fragrance to the other end of the earth and the other end would cry out of joy for what it had felt in its heart. Her presence made other flowers more fragrant. The more the breeze blew, the more she danced out of joy, the more mesmerizing was the air of her smell. There was no other example of life like her and she was ignorant of this.

Far up across the heights of the boundless the sky lived Cloudae Humilis. Cloudae Humilis was a fair weather cumulus cloud that had grown out of its usual appearance into the most astonishing piece of its genre. There was only one word that could explain this unusual phenomenon – humility. Humility was the description of its heart but the visual appearance it gave out was in extreme contradiction to its inner-self. The other clouds were jealous of it.

Humilis could be called as the rare occasion on which nature looked infinitely-dimensioned. Humilis was the only piece that denied the sky the authority it should possess due of its vastness. Humilis was the jar of solid water that humbled the sun though its appearance was only because of the sun. The background of Humilis was the blue sky – the very sky that was authority-deprived because of its presence. The same blue, the blue color of the open heart of Purpa – and the effect same on this piece too: Humilis denied the authoritative beauty of Purpa to rule the earthly heavens. The three bright colors of Humilis humbled this blue heart.

Humilis floated on its green color – the thin color that gave it flight and motion; that gave soothing power to its speed; that gave strength to its very existence – the green color of Purpa’s stem. The color on its head was crimson – the proclamation of its worth; a crown on its head; the life of its existence – crimson, Purpa’s favorite color. From the centre of these two colors came the color that destroyed the calmness of the sun rays – the yellow color – the same yellow color of the rays that had blushed Purpa.

Humilis came between the sun and Purpa whenever Purpa wanted a shade. Humilis showered cool drops of rain on Purpa whenever she wanted to dance – the rain that made her look more innocent and sensuous. Humilis glowed brighter whenever Purpa wanted to be entertained – the glow was more entertaining than the music of the gushing of waters at a nearby waterfall. Humilis did everything for Purpa and that made Purpa more and more like Purpa.

It was no doubt a unique bonding between a cloud and a flower – a rare phenomenon and a rare beauty. The distance that seemed to be a million miles between them made no difference to the hearts that were no more close than Purpa’s stem’s roots and the soil; no more than the sky and Humilis. Their love was related to the one between God and nature.

Every flower knew about the love between Humilis and Purpa. Their love was taken as an example for the marvels of life. Every cloud in the sky too knew about this – only that they were jealous. The clouds took this love as an example of the foolishness created by irrationals. But Humilis and Purpa never paid attention to this. They didn’t know this was called as love. They only knew that others called it as love. They never cared to name it. They were better off alone in the skies and on the earth. The presence of any life or emotion around them made no difference. They knew nothing but themselves and the unnamed relation between them. They only knew Humilis and Purpa who were made for each other.

Spring passed away and the summer arrived. The warmth of the summer brought them much close as Purpa needed shade and Humilis looked more wonderful with the brighter sun rays entering its mighty solidness. Their love grew with time and they grew with their love.

The peak of summer arrived and started a small pinch of discomforts in their hearts. They didn’t care for it. They cared for each other the most. They didn’t know what their future was, they just knew each other and the bond they had between them. They were least conscious of the change the nature has to undergo as the seasons pass by, they were only conscious of the bond that grew stronger with everyday passing by.

The end of a warm and cozy summer started the autumn. The leaves began to fall and the trees on the other side of the mountains began to change color. The color of the sun and the mountains too changed. There began the seasonal change in the direction of the breeze. This breeze sometimes even turned into wind. More and more leaves began to fall and more and more change began to take place.

The constant change finally made Humilis and Purpa aware of a little more than the existence of theirs’. The leaves below Purpa too began to grow orange. The stem began to turn crisp and the soft cushion under Purpa’s body began to harden. The color shades of Humilis began to darken as the sun rays changed their slanting and effect. Humilis began to lose size and shape. But none of this change could lessen their love. But they realized that the winter was near.

Then one pleasant evening, the evening that started unpleasantness, blew a breeze without any warmth in it. The uneasy temperature of the breeze couldn’t make Purpa dance. The smell of coldness in the breeze dried the blue heart of Purpa. Humilis felt the most of the new light. He shrank further. He sunk into himself. In a very far distance Humilis saw new pieces coming in. Humilis saw the clouds of winter at a fine distance from him. Even Purpa knew that the winter was here.

The distance between the harsh clouds began to become lesser than the distance between Humilis and Purpa. But their hearts were joined – no amount of coldness could harden them or separate them. The sun rays had already lost their brightness and Humilis became dim like a grey lifeless ball of cotton hanging in the sky that would be torn apart and blown away very soon. Purpa was dry with no single point of softness on it. It was as though the quality of softness was taken away from it to be stored in the heavens and preserved as a sample of richness and tenderness. Purpa was waiting for the final wind to blow it off into tiny pieces.

The day of their end arrived and they watched it happen with only one aim in their hearts – to be mixed into each other and left alone under the high mountains, untouched and unseen, until the eternity comes and takes them into the lap of the heavens. Their souls were already united and amalgamated; they only wanted it to be approved by the heavens. Their meaningless material bodies meant nothing to them, their connected spirits were just waiting to be accepted by the heavens.

The snow and the whistling wind were out of their hibernation. Humilis and Purpa were no more. Only the hard and cracked land beneath the snow knew of the two names. Only the sky above the winter clouds knew of their powerful un-dissipated love. Only the mountains knew of the weight and the depth of a single life – the life that was an integration of two souls which lived for each other. The winter was all that was left – as ignorant and innocent of ‘Humilis and Purpa’ as the charm of Purpa. The winter was all that was left – as strong and focused on its objective as the love of ‘Humilis and Purpa’….

…The seasons revolve and again comes the blooming spring; then comes the summer, the autumn; and again the winter. But now all this happens with a difference – every time it happens. Whenever they pass by the earth and every corner of it, they speak about only one thing ‘Humilis and Purpa’.

©2006 Zubair