Maliha

Maliha stumbled her way out of Makula’s dimly lit tent. Her hands shook as she staggered towards her home. She was disoriented and in denial.

She couldn’t believe what she had read. Couldn’t absorb all the information in stride. Hope and despair battled within her heart, her insecurities churning within her mind as she struggled to stay positive. Nothing has been written in stone. Nothing was certain.

There was still hope.

Maliha ambled her way through her tent door for a short reprieve. She needed time to truly analyse everything she had read.

She jumped out of her skin as a large figure parted through the cloak of darkness and stepped towards her.

“What is this?” Ujarak’s raspy voice was terse with suppressed anger.

Maliha’s mouth gaped open as a small sliver of sunlight kissed upon the hard angles of Ujarak’s furious face and fire spat from his eyes

Maliha had a sense of Deja vu as Ujarak chucked whatever had been clasped in his hands onto her pallet. It plunked onto the mattress and bounced away before Maliha could grasp what it was.

Her mind was disoriented. She had been in this moment with Ujarak before but, yet everything felt so different. It felt wrong. As if she were standing at the cusp of their relationship and looking in.

Her head shook as she tried to clear her mind from the groggy feeling.

This didn’t feel right.

She felt out of sync with herself but that couldn’t be true and yet the feeling did not go away, even as he prowled towards her with a dark look that matched his much darker skin.

“I said what is this?”

He growled with such anger and frustration it had Maliha stumbling back a few steps. Ujarak’s words lashed against her skin in a harsh swipe.

“What are you doing here?”

Her mind struggled to grasp that Ujarak was standing here in her home with a face of fury and betrayal. What had she done to warrant such rage from him?

His angry form swelled inside the room, filling it with his turbulent energy. All she could feel was him.

The air between them pulsed angrily as his fists clenched around nothing. Fingers biting into his palm as the tang of blood hung cloyingly in the air.

“I realised I had missed one of my knives this morning and returned to fetch it.”

His calm tone did not belie the tumultuous emotions that were flashing beneath his churning eyes.

“Did you find it?” Maliha hesitantly stepped towards him.

“Yes, I did.”

Maliha flinched as if he had hit her and then her eyes were shuttering as she tried to hide away all of her hurt and insecurities.

She was still raw from Sabra and Makula’s words, and his attitude was only forcing her convictions to waiver, but she wouldn’t let those voices of self-reproach fill her brain.

She was determined to get to the bottom of this.

“What’s wrong Ujarak? What have I done to anger you,” Maliha whispered, pulling at one of his closed fists in a soothing touch.

His anger melted away. His eyes clouding over with acceptance until he glanced down at her bed. Maliha felt the previously bated anger, sky rocket until it was chocking her with its ferocity.

Ujarak jerked his hand from her soothing clasp and spun away from her. His shoulder shook as he fought some impossible force. Eventually the cloud of anger won. Ujarak snarled under his breath as he charged to her bed and ripped whatever he had thrown and shoved it at Maliha.

Maliha’s eyes widened as she belatedly caught her mother’s chain in her unsteady hands. The medallion shone an opulent gold under the bright sunlight.

It was iridescent. The blue and green gems and stones seems to move under the sunlight, imitating that of a swaying boat along the pure blue waters. It was beautiful. A stunning Piece of jewellery.

It was like nothing she had ever seen before and the more Maliha stared at it the more the dread began to weigh her down.

“What is this Maliha?”

Maliha shook her head in confusion, tears welling in her eyes at the way in which he was speaking to her after the past few weeks they had shared in harmony.

“I don’t understand,” she snivelled.

“I don’t understand why you are so angry or why you are asking me about this,” Maliha huffed, her frustration mounting with every moment that passed by.

Her temper was rising the longer his anger clung to him. She needed him to speak. To console her and tell her that Sabra and Makula’s doubts weren’t true but instead he was attacking her over a necklace.

“It’s my mother’s necklace, Ujarak. What does it matter?”

“Your mother’s necklace?” He guffawed, “Do you think I am stupid?”

Maliha clenched the medallion in her hands as she tried to piece together where Ujarak’s frustration and anger was coming from.

“No,” she shouted indignantly ” I don’t think you’re stupid.”

He scoffed at her, pacing the floor as his hands gripped his luscious hair with angry tugs. His body was tense, his muscles flexing with suppressed feelings that he was failing to control.

“I don’t- I don’t understand,” she stammered as the fear took root.

“Of course, you don’t,” he sneered.

“Of course, you have no idea, well I am no fool and I know what that is.”

“I don’t - I don’t.”

“Why?” He bellowed.

Maliha jerked away from his lashing words as if it were his fist that had smacked across her face and not her heart that was bruising. Tears glided freely down her cheeks. She hastily tried to wipe them away and gain back what little of her composure she had left

“Ujarak, please. I don’t understand what is happening.”

Trepidation sunk into the pits of Maliha’s being as Ujarak turned to face. The anger had melted from his face and all that was left was an emotion that had her heart quaking.

Desolation.

“I just wanted to find my knife but instead I found that- that thing!”

Maliha looked down at the medallion in confusion. It was harmless. Just a piece of jewellery that tied her to a mother she had never known. In her darkest days, the necklace had consoled her in the way she had imagined her mother would had Maliha ever known her. The inanimate object had given Maliha a sense of belonging she had craved all her life.

“It’s just-”

“No,” he barked, pointing at the necklace Maliha held lovingly in her hands.

“That is not just your mother’s necklace.”

The air clashed around them. Thunder clanging in Maliha’s ears as Ujarak howled his anger.

“That is Daharrasol and it belongs to Nah Barros.”

Bewilderment washed over Maliha as all of her previous conversations with Ujarak shot to the forefront of her mind. Replaying over and over again.

“No.”

Her head shook in refutation, but her soul quivered with the truth.

She was Nah Barros.

Her elements were earth and water and Nah Barros were a tribe who contorted he earth’s matter like no other could. The earth was their soul, but water was in their blood.

It made sense but Maliha refused to believe. Fate couldn’t be so cruel. Not now.

“Not Nah Barros,” she moaned, her stomach churning with the urge to be sick.

Her world tilted on its axis. Fragmenting apart and realigning in a way that did not fit but made so much sense.

“Not them.”

“Yes, Maliha” he scowled mutinously.

“You are the daughter of my enemy.”

Maliha’s throat bobbed as her heart splintered to pieces. All of these years of not knowing who her parents were had been crumpled by Ujarak’s callous words. She was one of them. Her parents had contributed to the demise of Ujarak’s father. They had fought alongside the La Aquy tribe and had ultimately made Ujrak an orphan. There actions of revenge and justice had been well placed but in the midst of it all, they had forgotten that here was a young boy who had not only lost his mother but had also lost his father.

Ujarak could never forgive that.

He would never but still Maliha fought on.

He cared for her. He had said so. Declared his affection to her ever night and day for the past few weeks.

This family feud would not matter to him. It could not.

“It- I’m not them Ujarak. I had no part in it.”

Maliha could hear the desperation in her voice and she hoped he did to because she was desperate. Desperate to show him that she was different. She cared for Ujarak. She loved him.

“I’m not them.”

She wished he would believe her, but she could see from the defiantly strong set of his jaw and the fury in his swirling eyes, that Ujarak could not separate her heritage with who she truly was.

His Der Surjaz heritage defined him, but her Nah Barros ancestry did not define Maliha.

“We are one nation now. Ujarak, it doesn’t matter.”

When Ujarak’s remained silent her panic grew thicker. She gripped his forearm, pulling him towards her.

“Tell me it doesn’t matter.”

Her body sizzled with the contact, but it wasn’t the same. The currents were polluted, tainted by the years of tribal warring and the death of Ujarak’s father.

“Of course, it matters Maliha.” He snapped, tears lining his eyelids. “You are one of them. You don’t- you don’t belong.”

“No!” She screamed.

Her heart aches as if she had been stabbed and, in an essence, she had. Ujarak has unearthed her strongest fear and he was unleashing it against her with reckless abandon.

“This is my home. This is-” her words were cut off by a choking sob. Her works spinning as Ujarak’s rejection struck into all of her deepest fears.

Her heart was cracking open. Shattering under his brutal words and the reality that this could be the end.

“I belong here,” she pleaded.

“Please Ujarak, I belong here. This is my home.”

“I- Maliha, I don’t know what to do,” his throat was thick with despair but Maliha couldn’t give up.

She was invested. She had finally found somewhere that she belonged. Somewhere she could grow and not be afraid of being different. She was home. How could a family she had never known, take that away from her?

“How do I- Maliha, tell me how I keep you and give you what you need. How?” He begged.

“I can’t- I can’t see any other way, you need to go home. To meet your family, to return their Daharrasol. You have to.”

His words rang hollow. It was as if he were trying to convince himself and Maliha clung to the tiny glimmer of hope.

“I could go and then-”

“And what? return?” He Interjected. “No, there is no guarantee that they would let you leave and I cannot keep you here knowing you have a family out there who have waited a lifetime for you.”

“This isn’t so black and white Ujarak. There is a way around this. If you truly wanted me, you would find away instead of turning me away.”

Maliha hadn’t even taken time to think about the family waiting for her. All she could see was her future with the Der Surjaz slipping away because of a feud that Ujarak had no part in. Ujarak was still clinging to his father and his sins as if they were his own and it was ruining them.

“If you truly cared about me you would find a way!”

“Find a way to what?” He scoffed. “Reunite with the tribe who helped kill my father and forced me to be a man before my time?”

“Yes!” She screeched, exasperated by him and the situation.

“No! Too much has happened for me to just embrace them. Too much!” He thundered.

“You can’t hold onto the past forever Ujarak!” she murmured.

“What happened to your family was tragic, but you have to move forward-”

“Stop,” he croaked, struggling to quiet Maliha bit she continued talking over him.

“Do you think they would want you to live this way? Live this half-life? I didn’t know your mother or father, but I know no parent would want this for their child.”

Ujarak was living in the traumatic past and it was ruining his future and what could possibly be their future

She wanted him, craved him, loved him but he had to want her back. He had to be willing.

She palmed his face in her delicate hands. Her thumb stroking along his knitted brow gentled as she tried to soothe his burbling anger. His long lashes shuttered closed as he absorbed her loving touch into his hostile energy.

He was so handsome. Even when he was spitting mad and struggling to control his temper, Ujarak’s was still the only man who made her heart quiver like this.

“You have to let go,” she whispered.

“Ujarak you have to-”

“No,” he roared, violently yanking his body away from her touch

“You don’t know what I have gone through, and you don’t know my parents. So, don’t sit there assuming that I should or would do anything, especially not for you.”

Maliha tried to hide the grimace that his words caused but Ujarak saw it and he relished in her pain.

“No one is worth that level of forgiveness. Not you, not my sister, not Makula. No one can make me forgive when I am not ready.

Just like no one can make me accept you as my Sujurrah.”

His words were intentionally malicious, and they struck its mark with cunning accuracy.

“You. Are. Not. Her.”

Each enunciated word obliterated Maliha. Her soul weeping under his heavy barrage.

“You are an imposter. You hid that chain knowing that it was more than just a necklace.”

Those words cut Maliha like a knife. They gutted her to her core. She swallowed back the despair, trying to hold back the torrents of tears brewing.

“You knew, and you made me care for you -”

“I didn’t know,” her body quivered with shock.

She knew he was hurting. She had touched a subject that was so raw. His parents could inspire a rage in him like nothing Maliha had ever known or experienced. She knew that. Understood that but in light of what she had learnt today, she couldn’t take his words as anything but the truth he had kept hidden.

He didn’t love her, and he had never believed she was his one even when he had serenaded her with those very words she had longed to hear.

The pain was agonising.

Maliha barely heard his words over the sound of her heart rupturing.

“It doesn’t matter. Only love could inspire such a drastic change in me.”

And he didn’t love her. It was a bitter truth to swallow. She had opened her heart to him. Given him as much of herself as she had left, and it was still not enough.

Maliha was broken. Blood oozing from her already damaged heart. She had gambled with love and lost, lost so badly. Lost more than Ujarak. She would lose her friends, her home.

She had lost her sense of worth

“You don’t love me, not even a little bit?”

Her words were hollow. Empty as she tried to convince herself that this wasn’t reality.

“I- thought you cared,” she whispered defeatedly when his silence was all she was met with.

“I really thought-”

It was her fault. She should have known that Ujarak’s self-preservation was stronger than the small pieces of his heart he had shown her.

It hurt. The pain was stifling.

“Of course, you don’t feel the same. Who was I fooling? Of course, it was just me.”

His silence was deafening.

His silence was damning.

It wounded her deeper than any of the viperous words he had thrown at her because the silence said it all.

Makula had been right. Ujarak refused to read those scriptures because he would rather remain blind and in control than to open his eyes and see the world for what it truly was. He clung to the past even though it would hinder his future and he fooled Maliha into believing he was trying for her.

Makula had been right and now history was repeating itself. Petr had seen Maliha’s worth and decided it wasn’t enough and Ujarak had done the same. He had obliterated what was left of her heart and this time Maliha didn’t know how she would pick her battered heart up from the bloody floor

“I’m done.”

Panicked surged inside Ujarak’s heart as she began to retreat away from him. He grabbed at her arms.

“No, don’t touch me,” she wailed. Her fists laying into his chest over and over again.

Her nails gorged into his face as she lashed out at him with all of her soul’s pain. She was broken.

So, broken. Tears glided down her cheeks in rivulets as she railed into him. He had ruined her.

“Maliha,” he stammered, guilt choking him as he witnessed Maliha falling apart.

He had done that. broken her down to nothing with his cruel and callous words.

“Maliha-”

“You have hurt me,” she sobbed her head buried into his chest.

She had given him her heart and he had trampled on it.

With the last vestiges of her strength Maliha pulled herself out of Ujarak’s embrace and looked him dead in the eyes. Her green orbs hazy from the tears that had streamed down her cheeks.

“You have hurt me, Ujarak. More than anyone else ever has and I can’t- no, I won’t be your fool anymore.”

With those parting words, she exited from the tent, dragging her tattered heart and her weary soul behind her.