The one you have all been waiting for.

Bonus five.

Black stars and their glittering white twirls sparkled over the plain black skies. They were far more evident than they had been for the past fortnight. The rainy monsoon's this year had taken a turn for the force, the blinding strength of the showers had tore through an n number of branches, uprooting the very base of trees that had once been planted. The end of an era. In truth, after fourteen days of having taken shelter from the naked eye, the glowing moon had returned with full strength. Hanging, basking lower until it was in the reach of the most powerful grips.

It's twiddling color of yellow moonlight, pale and shimmery, painted the sun maimed skins that lay spent over the feather mattress. Hairline's lined with sweat, the thick strands of hair coiled around their pale faces. They were an indication of the caricature of pleasure they had just touched, ending at the cliff of the world. Until between them and their harsh breaths was the aftermath of sexual tension. Their skins — rosy, and yet still in it's own way remained alabaster to paint the other's. An infusion of milk into black tea almost.

Whispers of the rustling leaves broke through, from beneath the spread out branches. Their words whistled in soft cursive, kissed the tips of their skins. Caressing the still searing flesh, calming the throbbing muscles that had been fatigued from the intimate dances. Performed under the ever so watchful gaze of the moon, and the wrap of their soft — silk lined sheets. Naked still, chest to chest, their heart beats fought the intensity with which their blood coursed through their veins and calves. They ignored as a whole, the world in it's selfishness.

A year and a half on wards ; their marriage only strengthened each morning, and only gained an unspoken understanding each night.

Darab's whiskers traced the soft flesh that rounded around the breadth of Golnar's shoulder. With the skin of his lips, he traced the scars left, long ago from a teenage spell of acne. An open mouthed kiss, he pressed with an almost unrecognisable softness against her slender collar bone. Twirling his finger around the strands laced with sweat, his dull mouth found her bright one. Pressing squarely against it in a gentle bid to coax sounds that lent him an early gateway to the doors of heaven. Darab's fingers, tracing the length of her curves, dipping at the ends of her waist as they squeezed the flesh of her wide hipbones.

Humming in satisfaction, Golnar's dream laden eyes opened one after the other. Heavy from the dreams, lined with tears of irrevocable pleasure, Golnar sighed in merry delight. She gently ran a hand over Darab's pectoral, tracing the chain around his neck before she brushed them through the dark beard. Watching as it pricked her skin. The thick pads of her fingers traced the ends of his side burns before she wrapped them around his hair. With the scent of his musk and desire warped around her mind, sense of reality was lost on her.

It was her.
It was him.
It was them.

Golnar sunk into the bed, lower under his weight as his hands found their way to the flesh above her hips. They squeezed it. In an adoring bid. The words spoken to her in her youth — the failed understanding of women and men alike, to not recognise that the broadness she was asked to rid off, was a part of herself — melted with each of his touches. Darab's eyes that twinkled like the dark skies, and the scent of rain ; it squeezed her heart with utter joy, until a gasp of sheer love curdled itself in the back of her throat.

"Pata hai?" She asked out loud.
[Do you know?]

The words of her whisper were muffled against his bicep, that she had stretched out to kiss. With the corner of her forest-hazel eyes focused on to his sculpted face. She waited for his eyes to turn to her, and then the drop of his chin, until his lips pressed into the flesh of the top of her head. A signal for her to go on.

"Puranay zama'nay mein na jis aurat ki kolhay ki haddi chori hoti thi na ussay pasand kia jata tha." She continued at his permission.
[In the old times the woman who had broad hip bones was very much loved.]

"O kyun?" He raised a brow.
[Why's that?]

"Kyun ke," she hummed, with a giggle bubbling at the back of her throat as she stared at his confused face, with a hand rounding over his cheek, she pinched it between her fingers, "samjha jata tha woh sehat mand bachun ko janam dein gi."
[Because it was thought that they would give birth to healthy babies."

The sudden pace of the rain drowned out Darab's grumble of confusion. The harsh pelts fell over their balcony and the iron bars that curved to keep a boundary, dripping over leaves and then some falling on to their bare skins from the fast winds that carried the droplets with themselves. Golnar's face was covered with the breadth of his shoulders, but her slightly bare chest and arms were not safe from the pale showers of the cold droplets, until the candles they burnt blew out leaving only that one flickering bulb on.

It's gold hue painted Darab's cheeks with the lustrous iridescent. Like the perfumed paints she had seen her father's favourite artist use to paint portraits of them, far too many times. His mouth — twisted into a frown of confusion, the thick brow with a slender scar at the corner of one — a new gift from when Golnar had tried to help him shave his face — rose into a sharp rivet. Piercing through her heart, that like the Qurban was a wayward bed of water. Hiding.

Not for long though, as her lips fought to whisper the secret she had been keeping. Her secret ; one that would soon be theirs.

"Shaid Darab," she steered the conversation and his face with the edge of his finger towards herself, until their eyes looked straight into each other's, "humein jald pata chal jaye iss mein kitni sachai hai."
[Maybe Darab we shall soon find out how much truth is in this claim.]

"O kinvay?" He humoured, resting his left forearm beside her head.
[How so?]

"Ab meray kohlay ki haddi chori hai na?" She enquired.
[Now I have broad hips right?]

"Han."
[Right.]

"Tou jab humari aulaad ho gi tou humein jawab miley ga na?"
[So then whenever we have kids won't we get the answer to this claim right?]

"Han—ho sakda ae."
[Right—it's possible.]

"Ab jab mein maa ban'nay vali hun tou no mahinay mein jawaab milay ga na!"
[So now that I'm about to be a mother we will get an answer in nine months!]

"Han—ki?"
[Right—what?]

Darab choked on his breath. Tearing himself off of her frame, eyes laced with a shadow of tear and the despair of being a parent, he pressed his palm into the fruit knife into his palm. The pain that dwelled from the cut, matched the heart beat, it's rise and falls of disarraying ache. The crimson droplets of his blood fell over the pale sheets, each one a deeper shade of maroon than the previous ones. He could feel it's stickiness that coursed down his hairy arms and then painted the dainty pale of their bedsheet.

Darab squeezed his eye shut, tasting the saline taste of his tears. The conversation—the words of his wife roamed inside his mind. Echoing with an intense thrumming against the front of his lobe. Darab watched blankly over the wound ; self inflicted. A sob escaped his lips as he felt the bony feel of his wife's palm against his right pectoral. He could feel, even with the deathly blackness that surrounded his closed eyes, her eyes. They roamed over his face, and Darab imagined the doubt, the worry inside of them running like a maddening blister of fury.

"Darab?"

He inhaled sharply. There it was. Inside her voice gurgled the pain and disappointment, painted with the shroud ire of her worry for him. Blindly, he reached out for her hand, the injured one remaining beside his heart, the pulse of his wound matched the racing beats of his heart. Nuzzling her mouth into the curve of her neck, he teared. His hand, coiled itself loosely around her waist and pressed her into his body. To shield her from the world and it's evils. Even if it meant keeping her an arm's distance from himself.

"Golnar mein aedi khushi da haqdar nai sa jidi khushi tusi menu din ba din denday o." He whispered, as tears painted his face, his whimpering lips pressing into the top of her head.
[Golnar I was not deserving of such happiness, as much as you have given me.]

"Darab kyun ap soch rahay hai aisa? Ap sai acha insaan mein nai aaj tak nahi dekha."
[Darab why do you think like this? I have never seen a man as good as you.]

With no words exchanged, Golnar pulled the first aid kit from their drawer, pressing the lips of the lighter against the candle wick until it burnt again to paint their bedroom in that shade of hazy light they adored at this unspoken hour. Turning to Darab, their bareness no longer what scared them — physically and spiritually — she reached out to his hand that throbbed with an undivided pain. Just the sight of his raw wound burned the back of her throat with an unforgiving urge of tears. To cry until her breath chocked itself.

Golnar knew — she knew he did not hate her nor the child that she was carrying. It would have been stupid of her to think so. In the year and a half they had been married, Darab had mentioned the idea of having children more than a handful of times. He had at their many trips to Lahore and Islamabad stood outside the glossy children boutique's, pointing at the tiny gowns and shoes with unknown joy. Golnar knew better than anyone, he wanted to raise kids and give them a life he had been deprived of.

"Ustani ji shukriya. Meray lafz panvay khatam ho jan par tuada ehsan meray tae kadi nai mukay ga. Mein kadi vi apnay ap nu aeday sukh ich nai vekh sakda si. Par tussi? Tussi te mera Khuda menh aeda denday o har vari ke menu eik hor waja mil jandi ae jein wastay." He whispered, kissing the back of her palm that wrapped the gauze around her wound.
[Miss professor thank you. My loves might end but your favours on me will still not be over. I would have never imagined myself in such peace. But you? You and my God give me so much ever time that I get a new reason to live every time.]

"Kash ap apnay andar ki achai dekh saktay Darab." Golnar sighed.
[I wish you could see the goodness inside of yourself Darab.]

"Tu wekh lei na? Bas aho kafi ae."
[You have seen it right? That much is enough.]