Chapter 4 : Starcross (In the caption) The mist was thick and tangible. A whizz of whiteness brushed past Nishchay’s face as he walked ahead. Zia’s singsong voice grew loud and the screams of the Day Dwellers faded behind. He walked past the mist to a new light, not the glowing kind which prick the sanity of eyes but the gentle one like that of a warm fire on a cold winter night. The bridge had led them right into the valley. Zia stood there looking down into the valley. Tents and shacks and sheds stood slant and upright down. There were bonfires that were flickering, a sweet shade of red. The only sounds down there were of the crackling of fire, the sizzling of wood and of the nipping wind. “Come on! Let us go down!” They strolled down a path that led down to the civilisation. Zia was relaxed now. She didn’t walk with a sudden hastiness. She calmly strided looking around at everything. Her moon brooch had started to gleam again. A thwarted moon patrolled the sky and the valley. Nishchay looked around and for the first time in his life he had realised that light wasn’t unique. It varied from place to place. It pricked sometimes, healed in other times. A meek sunlight basked the skin but the sun’s light at noon and after burned it. The moonlight soothed the mind and the stars numbed all the pain there was in life.
