Seeking the Balance.

It is funny how the chronicles of our gatherings and our meetings start in languid silence. We walk in, we sit down and we contemplate each other. It is a love hate relationship between us, a necessary love hate relationship such as the one between life and death itself. Hopelessly entwined, one giving meaning to the other, one existing solely because of the other. As love and hate and as life and death. We are as siblings. All of us needing each other to survive, needing each other for balance and to make sense. We all have our roles to play. 

"We need to regain our dynamics," I rubbed my forehead tiredly. "It wasn't the best system, but it worked." 

Mademoiselle sat casually, legs crossed and sharp heels glinting in the light. The slick cut of her coat and her clothes, polished, elegant, tailored, asserting. Self-assured and arrogant. But somehow after all the ordeals of the past year, a comforting presence. A reminder of a better, stabler age. No one would've guessed or even thought, that Mademoiselle with her cold, calculating, mercenary presence, could ever be a source of comfort, softness and warmth. Or some semblance of it. 

She need not say anything and she knew it. But when she did, when she deigned to grace us with her words, they seemed to drip as honey from her lips. Warm and buttery in relishing the fact that she had her presence again. She was never meant to diminish for long and to ignore Mademoiselle completely is a folly one would make. 

Missy leaned back on her chair, her soft, unassuming attire unthreatening, gentle, unostentatious. She looked tired and drawn, her limbs hanging lazily by her sides as she stretched out on the armchair. 

Slowly, bit by bit, we need to find our balance again. I was at a lost for what to say. We all knew what needed to be said, what would be said and there was no need for me to actually say it. Neither was I inclined to actually say it. 

I sat back as well, feeling the familiar soft cotton of my plain top, the reaffirming texture of my old jeans and my satchel bag by my side. We had long been bereft of each others' company. And meeting each other like this again, there was an awkwardness that lingered in the placid air. An awkwardness mixed in with a scent of guilt and spice but at the same time a comfort in it finally happening like pieces falling back into place and a sense of embracing belonging that lingers in the air as in finally meeting family again. 

"We're nowhere near it. But at least we're here now." 

Maybe we are all due a change. God knows this world moves with change. It is an ever constant dynamic of shifts and eddies that swirls in and around itself, weaving its threads into the fabric of all existence, giving it life. But where does that change lead us? Does it lead us to bigger and better places? Or darker, smaller spaces within the confines of our own minds and imaginings. 

Now Mademoiselle was never known for outward displays of affections or anything for that matter. But she knows what needs to be done, just as her tendencies may be unwise at times or a lot of times, she does step up when she needs to. When she does something, it means something. We are all unwise. It is the human condition. And she reached our her hand, first to Missy, then to me. And we linked hands, in a circle. For the first time ever, a physical manifestation of our interactions with each other, initiated by Mademoiselle herself. 

This world moves by change. And maybe we too are due a change. We may not be able to or even want to replicate what once was but we can together, create a semblance of something that works again, with the dynamics of this time that we are in, a stability that suits the present we are in. Maybe we are all due a change. But wherever and however we decide to move forward, we move forward together.