The flight

She regarded the great being in front of her with some trepidation.
It towered before her, regal, rugged,  breathtakingly beautiful... all at once.
She caught a light whiff of smoke and took a step back when she realized, it came from the nostrils of the fire breathing beast, who seemed to be regarding her back with a sombre expression.
For a moment she felt a terror that excluded her from all else...

The noises behind her suddenly jarred her back to her predicament.
The forest rustled with sounds of the demons she had been trying to outrun, before entering this magical clearing.
The beast heard them too and raised its fearsome head to take in the sudden restlessness of its habitat.
In her mind's eye, she could see the first of the demons breaking the thick cover of trees behind her, inching surreptously towards her...
The beast turned slightly, till it was facing her, looking down upon the trembling form of the lost soul that she was.
As the fiery red eyes, reminicient of eternity, met her mere mortal gaze, the clock was broken, for but fraction of a moment, with the weight of her choice; the choice between the demons she knew as well as herself and this unknown unbelievable terror...
Time resumed on its course and with it, hers was chosen too.
Just as the demon's slithery arms brushed her black cloak, she reached out towards the flowing white mane of her beast of choice, and swung onto its back.
The beast in turn, spread its mighty wings with a surprisingly soft ruffle, and with a contrasting mighty roar, rose up towards the orange dawn sky. The speed left her disoriented and faint but the wind that ripped through her, woke up her very soul, as she watched her demons staring up gaping, before being eternalised in a cloud of fire raining down from the nostrils of the accelerating beast...

Stark White Ends

He felt the breeze ruffle his hair lovingly, as the bike yawned lazily down the dark road. Unlike most people, for whom biking meant riding full throttle on an empty road, flying faster than the wind itself, leaving the world behind, for him, it was a slow ride along an empty road, taking in the scent of the wilderness, breathing the slow languid solitude, as the world moved past, slowly at its own pace. Nothing relaxed him more. On some nights he would go to the dark empty road on the outskirts of the city, just put the bike in the first gear, close his eyes, and let the bike take him wherever it wanted to go.
It was one such night.. He was lost in his version of nirvana, when he sensed a foreign aroma ripple through all the familiar odors of the night. He tried to place it..what was it that he smelt? A bud of passion in a swirl of loneliness coloured with a dash of the wild and the unfamiliarity of the city, an open invitation hiding an impenetrable wall, a feminine mystery.. his eyes opened, and he saw her walking down the pavement. The white salwar, unhurriedly kissing the quick paced heels... the kurta coloured with little drops of ruby red, that seemed to be shifting, forming a new pattern with each step... the long black braid, that went in a pendulum motion, that had something hypnotic about it, It took him a minute to force his eyes away and break its spell. But what took his breath away was the scarlet dupatta, which seemed to whirl around with a life of its own... the deepest red with the starkest white ends...
He pulled his bike ahead and stopped next to her. The heels stopped, and she turned a slow black gaze towards him raising her questioning eyes, with just that hint of suspicion in them. For a moment he didn't say a word, standing there dumbfound, staring at those impossibly red lips. It was when they moved to ask him his purpose that he finally snapped out, "Hey! This is kind of a lonely place,to be travelling alone, I would love to give you a ride back to the city". He sensed a hesitation in those vibrant eyes, and quickly turned a smile to put her at ease. "Are you sure, it won't be a inconvenient?", the lips asked slowly. "Not at all, I was going there anyway".
The bike started again, and he felt the dupatta on his back, almost caressing it. He could have sworn there was something almost wet and sticky about it.
He ignored it as the wind took over and the scents of the night returned to fill him.
The trees fell past, as if of its own violation, the bike got faster... the wind ceased to caress him, but crashed against him to break into a million pieces.
The grey ribbon ahead disappeared, as the red dupatta whipped out like the devil's tail, to wrap itself around him.
The ripple of his scream shattred the silent mirror of the wild, before it set itself back in one.
She walked on with the white salwar, unhurriedly kissing the quick paced heels... the kurta coloured with little drops of ruby red, that seemed to be shifting, forming a new pattern with each step... the long black braid, that went in a pendulum motion, that had something hypnotic about it, and the scarlet dupatta, which seemed to whirl around with a life of its own... the deepest red with the equally bloody ends...