The Obsidian Princess

Chapter 7

The next morning Eloa woke up absolutely fresh with no memory of the previous night whatsoever. She briefly remembered talking to someone inside the castle but she had no clue regarding what she had done. And it was easy enough for her to peg that as a mere nightmare. After all that was the logical explanation.

“Hey Girl!!!! Sleep okay last night?” asked Nia as she came outside with a cup of coffee in her hand.

“I guess it was alright…although I must say that from the past few days my sleep has been riddled with nightmares like anything, you know. I think yesterday also I saw that I was inside the castle,” said Eloa as she wrapped the cashmere stole around her torso as a bad protection against the chilly winter air of the cold morning.

“Then I have to say that you are recuperating far well than what I had expected you to,” said Nia as she smiled and slurped on her coffee noisily.

“And what do you mean by that statement?” asked Eloa as she narrowed her eyes at her best friend.

“Well we all know that you thought that you saw the ghost of the Countess of Blood inside the castle the night you spent there and from my past experience you would have tried to prove that what you saw was actually real. So that is the reason why I am saying that you are in a far better state that what I had expected you to be,” replied Nia as she looked at Eloa and then went back to throw the cup in the dustbin.

“There are things in heaven and earth Horatio which elude our thinking….isn’t it?” said Eloa as she looked at the castle and felt a sudden urge of sketching it. After all it was going to be the last day of the trip. So might as well make it a productive one.

“Now with Shakespeare I cannot argue at all but you seem a bit different than usual Eloa…are you sure everything is perfectly alright?” asked Nia as Eloa turned towards her and hen sighed deeply.

“I might have been but since my best friend has evidently forgotten the fact that today is my birthday and that too my twenty-first birthday, how do you think that I am going to be perfectly alright?” asked Eloa as Nia nodded her head at her.

“How many years have we been friends Eloa?” asked Nia as she looked at the Cachtice castle, looming in front of them like a beautiful ghost of yesterday.

“I think I can safely say for seventeen years…but why do you ask that?” asked Eloa as she started going back inside the room in order to get her sketch pad and a chair. Nia followed her back in the room to get her stuff as well.

“In all these seventeen years has there been a single instance that I have forgotten one event regarding the most memorable days of our lives? I agree that neither have you but have I?” asked Nia as she also opened her pack and got out her pad and her bag of pencils.

“No as far as I recall there has not been any year as such except this one…” said Eloa smiling at her best friend.

“May be you knew that I have a surprise planned for you back at home and that is the reason which you had to waste the morning like this, but don’t you worry. I have got the perfect plan for this one as well,” said Nia as she emerged with a cupcake in her hand from within the bag and Eloa smiled at her friend. Whatever might be the situation she always had her back and that is why they had been almost inseparable since childhood.

“This is just a small one darling…you know the bigger surprise is waiting for you back at home,” said Nia as she started singing Happy Birthday to her best friend.

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to youuuuuuuu

Happy birthday dear Eloaaaaaa

Happy birthday to you…….

Eloa blew the candle from the cup cake and then she bit into it from Nia’s hand and Nia as usual like every single year gobbled up the rest.

“This time there was no frosting on the cake but the one that we are getting for the evening that is going to have ample frosting. So you can lick that one like you do every year,” said Nia as she sprayed a few drops of the cake from her mouth all around her and Eloa scowled at her.

“Really Nia…you are not a kid anymore…you need to get out of all these things..you have an obsessive compulsive behavior of cleaning every single thing but still you keep on making things dirty..no idea what kind of behavior this is,” said Eloa as Nia finished eating and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I don’t do this when I am in home or in my room Eloa…I only do all these childish things when I am outside of that place. This is not my sanctum sanctorum,” said Nia with an expression of finality and both the girls went outside their room and sat down with their sketch pads open on their knees.

“Start to finish?” asked Nia looking at Eloa and she nodded replying affirmatively,” Start to finish.”

This was a game that they used to play since they were kids and they had been continuing this now that they were almost at the beginning of their careers. They used to start doing this in order to see who could finish the task early and in that way they would be able to do a lot of things a lot faster. And they still continued the practice.

It had been a good run always. And today was also not actually supposed to be so different at all.

Finally after probably forty or forty-five minutes Eloa put down her pencil on the pad and looked at Nia who was also looking at the effect that she had been able to produce of the castle and then looked at her friend.

“You think we will be able to ever make something like this completely on our own?” asked Eloa as she breathed in deeply. Her nose was cold yet her skin did not change colour to the normal red that happened.

“Well to be honest, I am not seeing ourselves do something like this at all in any time in near future. This is an architectural wonder, something which can be commissioned only in the Middle Ages or even before that by the Lords and Barons or the Kings and Queens. We have to either learn how to time travel or we need to become the architect of the Queen of England. Which one of them seems even slightly probable to you?” asked Nia as she put up the sketch and showed it to her best friend and Eloa did the same.

Both of them were beautifully made sketches but the moment someone would take a glance at them it would become very clear that one was drawn from the artist’s point of view and the other was absolutely structural and mechanical.

Sometimes Eloa was marveled at how people could see the same thing in different ways.  It was a matter of perspective on how they could do things and see things in a different manner.

“So are you ready to head back home?” asked Nia as she stood up from the chair and found that Eloa was still looking at the castle. As if her eyes were searching for someone there perched on the top only to be disappointed.

“Yeah sure!!” said Eloa without any conviction at all. There was something amiss here and she could feel it in the bones but she had absolutely nothing in her hand at all. She could not place her finger on what was changed since yesterday but she could not even feel. Might be it was all in her mind and she could not think anything more.

“Do you think that this sketch is going to be enough for the project that we are supposed to show to our respective heads?” asked Nia as they both started packing their bags.

“I think this sketch will serve only as the basis of what I am planning. It will be like a summer castle for the politicians if they can buy something like that, like you were saying that we would have to go back to the Middle ages in the century where the nobles and kings would commission projects like this but that might not be necessary. We can always make a large structure and instill the spirit of modernity in the building that I am planning. Once we are done with the Christmas party we can sit down and start planning on the project…like you can do the interior designing like always and I can do the outer structure. I think and with that we will have a real winner in our hands,” said Eloa as Nia started chattering excitedly about how she was thinking more about the same thing.