Misc. Erotica The Nine Nights

[shailu4ever]

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Time no longer made sense. Hours passed, or maybe minutes. The light grew warmer; the air shimmered. A mosquito buzzed by his ear. Somewhere, a branch cracked. Then he noticed it, a faint movement far down the strip of land.
 
A shape. Human. Small, unsteady.
 
His pulse quickened. For a heartbeat, his mind refused to believe it. Then a faint voice carried across the water, hoarse, trembling, barely there. A girl’s voice.
 
Naveen straightened, bracing himself against the canoe. “Hello?” he shouted, voice rough. “Over here!”
 
The sound broke the stillness like a stone thrown into water.
 
The figure turned and lifted an arm weakly. She was wading carefully, her steps heavy with fatigue. As she came closer, the details sharpened, a young woman, barely nineteen, drenched and trembling, her hands clutching the trunk of a fallen tree. Her long hair clung to her face in dark strands, her skin pale from shock.
 
When she reached him, she stopped a few feet away, breathing hard, her eyes wide, a mix of disbelief and fragile relief. For a moment, they simply stared at each other, two survivors who couldn’t yet understand that they were alive.
 
Naveen moved closer, slowly, as if approaching something sacred. “Hey… you’re awake,” he said, kneeling beside her. His voice sounded distant to his own ears.
 
She blinked rapidly, her lips trembling. “Who…” she managed, before her voice broke. “Please… I don’t know where my family is.”
 
“It’s alright,” he said softly, the calm tone of a doctor surfacing almost by instinct. “You’re safe for now. Just breathe.”
 
Her chest rose and fell in uneven rhythm. She looked around, at the water, the broken trees, the horizon where the sea met sky like a scar. “Is there… anyone else?”
 
Naveen turned slowly, scanning the horizon that held only silence. The world seemed to shrink to the space between them. He shook his head.
 
For a long moment, neither spoke. The sea murmured behind them, restless but subdued, as if ashamed of what it had done.
 
Finally, he said quietly, “We should move to higher ground. The tide might come back.”
 
She nodded faintly, her eyes still wide, her movements mechanical. Together, they began to walk toward a patch of raised earth near a fallen banyan tree. Two strangers carrying silence heavier than their own bodies.
 
The sun broke through the clouds at last, casting fractured gold on the water. The world seemed to breathe again, slow, fragile, unsure.
 
It was the first faint proof that life, somehow, still existed.

-- oOo --

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