"One Night in Varanasi" short story for the UPick the Story, IWrite it Contest!

This story is written from a prompt in my UPick the Story, Iwrite it CONTEST. I wrote this one live on dlive. You can find the livestream video here.

"Samir, what are you thinking about?" Aaiyadi asked. Her eyes, wide, and filled with happiness, pierced into him.

"I'm watching the most beautiful girl in the world," he said.

The night was warm and the scent of the new summer grass filled the open air pavillion with rich scents. Warm sounds filtered in from the nearby city streets, music played far off dogs barked and children's laughter filtered through it all. Soon the sky would darken and the moon would be their only light, here in this abandoned corner.

"Dance with me," Samir said, sliding down from his perch on the decrepit locomotive.

"Why is it always dancing with you, Samir?" she smiled.

She turned away from him, begging him to pursue.

"You dance beautifully," he said.

Samir moved in front of her and held out his hands, she stepped into his embrace.

"There's no music," she laughed. "We'll look ridiculous."

"I fail to see the downside of that, I'm ridiculously in love with you," he said.

Samir sang, his warm baratone filling the empty freight yard, echoing off the metal body of the ancient locomotive. And as he sang they danced. One song became two, became three and as is the way of lovers, time ceased to exist, until the moon was full over their heads and the city lay still behind them.

"We've danced almost half the night," Aaiyadi smiled. She yawned and rested her head against Samir's shoulder.

"I want to take you away from this place," he said.

"I want that so much too," she said.

There was silence. Just two bodies, entwined in the moonlight.

"My love, I don't want you to go," Samir said. "We'll make our home here, my father owns the land."

"Yes, Samir, we could place our house near the stream, and hear the birds singing in the morning light," Aaiyadi told him.

She sighed a happy sigh, for a brief hour, she gave into daydreams of their home, and the colors and the furniture, and the children that would run gleefully through its yard on the way home from school.

A bell rang in a tower nearby.

"It's almost time," he said. "Do not come for me again, my love. It's time for you to go on."

Her lips trembled.

"No, Samir, the shaman," she said.

"Has tried before," he told her. "What's done is done and I must forever be locked in this world, here."

"Then I will be locked here too," she said.

From beneath her gown, she drew a bejeweled dagger. Holding it in both hands, she plunged it into her breast, her smile fading as the cold steel bit into her soft flesh. A plume of scarlet cascaded down her bosom as she fell to the ground, still.

Samir sank to his knees, a wail escaping his throat.

"What have you done?" A man's voice whispered.

It was harsh and low, from between gritted teeth.

"Samir, what have you done, my son?"

"Father? No, it wasn't me, I told her, to leave me here, and she chose," Samir said.

His throat closed in a sob as he fell, face down on the ground. The bells sounded again, and again, and again.

The old man screamed, his clawlike, ancient fingers, gripping Samir's shoulders as he picked him up, bodily from the ground.

"Why? Why must you be so selfish, my son? Isn't it enough that you stole yourself away from us here, that you died before your time, must you continue to rob others of the joys of their children," the old man wailed.

There was no answer. Samir's grinning skull looked back with vacant sockets, flesh gone long before this day, long before the night in which he lived here in this place and no other.

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