Fareeha can’t sing but she does, sometimes. When she’s cleaning, or alone; when a song she’s heard a hundred times comes on, even when she doesn’t like it - even when she doesn’t know the words.
When Angela first met Fareeha, they were so far removed from one another so as to be little more than accessories of the environment. Just another person passing through the background.
When Angela met Fareeha again, years later, having forgotten and then relearned her name, she was much more present, but less in the way a friend is and more in the way a stranger in a room full of familiar faces is. She was calm, and distant, and quiet and this gave Angela the opportunity to inflict a personality onto her based on nothing but speculation.
She was aloof. Pragmatic. Ruthless. She had a reputation as a good, great even, tactician but not an approachable one.
Learning Fareeha had been like learning the streets of a new city. Where once the mental image was one partially-familiar street, one visible trait, which could be relied upon as an indication of the whole, the back roads and points of interests were a slow revelation, providing a more complete picture which the first street could never have given.
For a very long time, Fareeha did not sing.
And then one evening, as by chance Angela was passing the woman’s room, she learned that Fareeha did. Had, perhaps, all along.
“I love you,” says Angela, and Fareeha stops her song. It’s the first time she’s said it. It’s the first time either of them has.
“That’s sudden,” Fareeha responds, but grins.
“No,” says Angela, smiling faintly, “I don’t think it is.”
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