Hayi whispers the word to herself.

Ephemeral.

She likes the way it sounds as it rolls off her tongue in a weirdly foreign way. She thinks it is an apt description for silence. And she likes silence, so in a way she thinks that it is unfortunate that the moments of quiet are fleeting and so short lived, like laughter cut short. Except in this case, it's quite the opposite, she decides.

She ponders upon the matter as her eyelashes flutter gently against her rosy cheek, bringing her eyes to close. She hears the gentle pitter patter of drizzling rain, albeit a little muffled, against the window panes hidden behind the cream colored drawn curtains. She hears the near silent whirring of the ceiling fan as it spins, turned down to its lowest speed. She hears the constant drip drop of water in the pipes hidden behind layers of plaster and concrete. She hears in the distance, perhaps a floor below, the comical conversation between her mother and father as she berates him for having stolen an extra sausage from the pan.

She does, in fact, think that she is an oddball, an outlier amongst her peers of the same age. She has been silently observing and realized that perhaps she is the only one who favors the quiet and peace of silence. Somehow, everyone else seems perfectly fine and comfortable with the noise that Hayi finds a little more than what she'd be able to handle. It's not as if she has sensitive ears or anything of that sort. No, that's certainly not the case, she tells herself yet again.

When it's time for dinner, her mom hollers from down below for her to hurry down to eat. Hayi winces at the loudness of the sound but quickly leaves her room, shutting the door behind her quietly. She settles down in her usual seat, across her parents and mutters a soft, "Thank you for the food." Her mother nods in reply and smiles, motioning for all of them to start eating. She starts on the scrumptious spread and notes the faint tinkling of cutlery against porcelain.

Through the meal, it's just her parents chattering about little things here and there and asking Hayi about her day at school, or if she wants to go out anywhere during the upcoming holidays. Hayi nods and bobs her head here and there just to let them know she's listening to what their saying and occasionally, she answers them in her soft toned sentences. Hayi doesn't say more than a few sentences though, before she finishes up the food on her plate and retreats back to the quiet of her room.

Her parents had long since found her behaviour somewhat abnormal for a girl her age, seeing how little she talked while other kids could go on and on with their endless chatter. It wasn't as if there was anything severely wrong though, she got along pretty well with the others in school. So they put the matter aside and learnt to accept Hayi's quiet as part of her. Perhaps, it's because she doesn't have a sibling to fool around with, they reason. 

In school, Hayi tries not to distance herself from the others, because although she likes the silence of being alone, she doesn't particularly like the loneliness that came with it. She has a few close friends in her class that she sticks around with and she's thankful that they understand how she doesn't speak much and how they too, are naturally less rowdy than the others in class. She does enjoy school, however quiet she might be and she likes going out with her small group of friends, as long as she doesn't have to walk through too many crowds in the mall. 

More than once however, Hayi's been put into awkward situations. It isn't really her fault though, just her brain shutting down on her. Once, a senior from the music club, her extra curricular activity, had asked her out of curiosity, why she'd wanted to join the club. Her head was filled with answers and reasons, but somehow she couldn't put them into words and she had stood there, staring at him wide eyed. Her senior couldn't really fathom what Hayi was doing and so he had turned and walked away awkwardly, muttering a soft,"Nevermind." Hayi had felt her cheeks burning and she had never felt more embarrassed. Ever since then, she'd never spoke to that senior again. 

And just recently, her english teacher had called her name and made her stand, asking her to recite a passage in English. Flustered, Hayi scanned through the rows of foreign words. To be honest, she had no problem understanding it. Reading it out loud however, was a totally different story. Her standard of English was actually better than most and so the teacher had picked her out to do the reading. But she couldn't, the words got stuck in and came out like a strangled mess. Her teacher had been slightly taken aback and quickly told her to sit back down and that it was alright, practice makes perfect. Hayi had felt so strongly in that moment, that digging a hole and burying her head deep in the ground would be a perfectly practical thing to do. 

More often than not, Hayi sits herself down in her room and wonders why she is such a queer person or rather why others around her are so queer. She doesn't understand why people like racous laughter and booming music, when all it does is give her a headache. She doesn't understand either, how others can rattle off in confident speech while she struggles hard to even get a few sentences out of . Perhaps it's because she keeps all her words processed and in her head. She does prefer written words over spoken, which explains her love for books. She thinks that it's only necessary to speak the most important of things, rather than rattle off about nonsense, so when others do that, she finds herself drifting away into her little world filled with the faint buzzing of silence. Sometimes she doesn't even realise she's gone again until someone calls out to her and drags her out of the comfortable quiet, throwing her back into all the noises. 

Hayi wonders if one day she will be comfortable with the fact that silence will always be ephemeral.

And she wonders if she can learn to live with the cacophony of sound.

So the Hayi in this story kind of is a small part of me that sometimes prefers silence over noise because more often than not, I find myself being completely silent while I listen to others talk. It's kind of unintentional and more of a habit but I don't know I'm just quieter than most I guess :} hope you guys enjoyed this short fic!