Beauty bereft.

(Photo by Vanta.)

They had been abandoned by the ankles of the woman who became the prayers of every beat resonating around the universe. The woman said they scraped her ankles and made them bleed of bruises. They were accused to have lost a bell here, or two there. Apparently, they didn’t sound as sweet as her dance looked. Just how was she to dance with them on?

And thus, abandoned, they were. Carelessly put away into the unabashedly ignored attic of the gigantic house; the one that they had won her, from His Majesty.

 Every evening, they’d be bitter kissed by another layer of dust... Flies and sly ants would walk past the intricate blue thread work and the gold of each bell which weren't as golden anymore. The edges of the table on which they sat withered with time, and the room would birth nascent cobwebs and the dirge of grey into which every element of the room camouflaged
.

Every element, but them. They sat on that very table like a bold mother, pregnant with a secret. The sheet of dust would only gather in the broken ends of each bell and accentuate the rest of the body which spoke of age and art. Of flawlessness, of music, of dance… of a kind of beauty that ceased to exist once they were taken off her ankle.

They sat on that very table, listening to the woman dance somewhere far away in the court of his majesty. They’d see her taking her first bow and her last; they knew every breath she’d inhale after every fourth beat. They knew every flaw in the continuation of her hurried steps, and yet those steps were birthed in the womb of those; the ones that sat cold in that old, trivial attic.

What a pity; thought an anonymous wise man. A wise man who existed in the motes of dust around the old room, who existed in the aroma of rose water at the majestic palace.

Her feet tremble now with the new pair of golden bells on her mended ankle. They tinkle after her feet hit the ground, not with them. They’re a proud pair of 500 bells, and yet they sound faint, shy, or rather… coward like. And the irony is, the woman knew.

Bereft from what completed her next step from the first, she tussled with her tenacity to dance like that celebrated figurant she’d become in that kingdom of his Majesty; the kingdom where people kissed their fingertips to her rhythm, to her graceful glide that progressed unobstructed on the marble floors of the court, like the breeze of the season of art.

And yet, the beauty of that figurant faded as she tried harder and harder… for the essence of her dance lay sitting on an old table; bold, aged, and yet gorgeous; in those blue and golden pair of ghungroos. Quiet, incomplete, and bitterly proud; bereft of those bruised ankles. 
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First proper piece of the summer, written in a strange strange mood. There y'go. Awaiting your feedback :)
Much loving,
Nil.