“Hello?” came a timid little voice from behind me.

I whipped around, a little excited, a little scared and a little anxious. There was a boy standing there. His face was still cute and childish, but I had to note that he stood almost a foot taller than me. Who could it be? “Hi,” I answered, staring awkwardly back at him.

“Where are you going?” he asked, looking down at his feet mostly to avoid the brilliant sun blazing behind my head.

“What do you mean?” my brow furrowed up.

“It’s not like you would be here just to be here. Nobody comes to the Thar desert to visit,” he narrowed his eyes at me.

“They don’t.”

“No. People only pass by for travel. When they have to go somewhere through the desert or for something necessary. Even if tourists do come, they can’t stay in the sweltering heat of the desert in summer for more than two hours,” he informed me. I could see incredulity in his dark brown eyes, he had not expected to see me there.

“What are you here for, then?” I eyed him up and down. He wore a simple white shirt that covered his skinny arms, and white cotton trousers for his legs. On his head a cloth had been tied up in a ring to protect his eyes from the sun, but it didn’t seem to be helping him from the dazzling rays. His hands were brown and calloused, but small, and his face was round and a bit childish. There was a scar just below the right side of his chin, while his neck was covered with beads of perspiration.

“Oh, I live nearby. In a village. We have a river passing through, and our settlement usually manages to survive there. But there is a severed drought this summer, so we are going to the town the closest to us in the west to get some water. I am here with a few other people of my village, coming back from the town.” I noticed two flasks of water tied to his belt, and a small pot lying in the sand behind him. Beyond it stretched out the tiny footprints of his sandals.

“Where are they?”

“Not far,” he grabbed my hand and I flinched away. “Sorry,” he said. “Come with me.” He led me up a sand dune from where I could see a group of around 15-20 people carrying water pitchers, pots, bottles and containers. They were all dressed in simple white clothes like him, and many of them were children and women.

“Shouldn’t you go back home with them?” I asked, looking out to the people who were yet to notice me as they walked further away into the sand, leaving only footprints behind to say that they were there. And with the wind, those too would be gone soon, erasing all trace that they had ever passed there.

“My home is not far. I can catch up. And as you can see, they haven’t even realised that I am missing yet,” he gave me a mischievous yet sad smile.

“How old are you?” I had to ask. Even though he towered above me, he wasn’t the least bit intimidating. I wanted to find out more about this amiable young boy.

He chuckled. “Where I come from, people usually ask a person their name before asking their age, but I guess you have different customs. Anyways, I’m almost 13.”

“So you’re 12?”

“Almost 13. There’s a difference.”

“Not much,” I pointed out. “What’s your name then?”

“There still is a difference. And I am Raghav,” he extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, miss …?”

“Melga,” I said, putting my hand in his. He pulled it to his lips and kissed it, and I looked at him agape.

“Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Melga,” he bowed.

I smiled and retreated my arm. I didn’t know why he was doing all that, but he was definitely pretending. I curtsied too. “The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Raghav.”

My wide smirk brought a smile to his face, his brown lips stretching from ear to ear. “So what brings you here?”

“You don’t need to know that,” I said, avoiding his yes but trying to hide my smile. I didn’t know whether he would believe me, so I didn’t want to reveal the truth. All the people I had seen were too tall to be dwarves, but I didn’t know whether they knew about our existence or not. And if they didn’t, I was cared to reveal it to the. What if I put my species in mortal peril?

“Oh, alright. Can you at least tell me how old you are?”

“15,” I said. I was older than him yet probably looked like a child. I didn’t know what reaction to expect from him.

“Interesting,” he said as he tapped his chin and gazed out at the horizon. “I’m guessing you struggle with your height in school.

My eyebrows shot up. How did he know? “Uhh, yup,” I mumbled.

“I’ve seen the shortest boy in my class being tormented by all the other kids. They play horrible pranks on him. I feel sad for him, but I haven’t seen him much this summer. I heard that he has grown a lot, so the next session shouldn’t be as hard for him.”

I gawked at him, my mind elsewhere as I wondered why he was comparing me to the shortest boy in his class when I had to practically bend down to hug my friends. Then I again realised that despite being taller than me he was younger, he was not a dwarf. So in his world, I was certainly very much below normal height.

“What?” he waved his hand in front of my face.

“Sorry,” I shook back to reality. “So what pranks have they played on him?” I smiled. He smiled back, understanding that I wanted all the gossip of his life. New person, new species, new friend, and I wanted to find out more about his normal life.

“Well, when we were going for a special function and we had to sit there by height, some of the boys replaced the first chair by a really tiny chair for the toddler, and the boy was forced to sit there for the entire duration,” he chortled at the memory. I didn’t blame him. Even if he sympathised with the boy, it wasn’t wrong to find the incident a little hilarious.

“Then another time, they put stones in his bag so that when he carried it he hunched over and looked even shorter. Then they shouted out and called him ‘tiny hunchback’ every time they saw him for a month,” he had a disapproving scowl on his face.

“Oh, that’s pretty sad. have any of you ever tried playing tricks on the teachers?” I asked, hoping I wouldn’t overstep any bounds. It was strictly forbidden in the dwarf kingdom, and anyone who did it could face expulsion. But I had read about it in novels and wanted to see if it happened in real life. Even if of another species.

“Well, not usually,” he answered. “usually the teachers are pretty strict and control the class. There is too much fear instilled in us to play pranks on them. But I have heard that the teacher that teaches 14-15 year olds can be a bit forgetful at times, and clumsy too, and they tend to make fun of him. I look forward to meeting him.”

And just like that we were talking. Raghav and i talked on and on, about school, the weather (for which i couldn’t say much), our siblings, our hobbies, our parents, the food we ate. It turned out he and I shared the same birthday. We sat down in the sand, and just continued making random conversation until we finally realised that it was late. the sun dipped low in the horizon, sending out slanting orange rays that designed the sky in a design of multiple colours. A slow breeze moved past the rapidly cooling sand, demolishing sand dunes and making new ones. We stood up finally, as he remembered that he had yet to come home. Memories of that morning came flooding back to me, that my life existed in an underground city of dwarves. My encounter with Raghav had made me completely forget about Roney, Mr. Monor or anything that had happened that morning.

I watched him walking away, the sun behind me as he left behind fresh footsteps in the sand which soon started fading away, and suddenly the trapdoor opened behind me.

I saw my father rush out from the hole and hug me tightly. “Oh, Melga! Why did you come up here? I’ve been looking for you all day!” I could see worry lines on his forehead slowly disappearing as he clung onto me like I was his life support.

Then he turned around and saw Raghav trudging through the sand dunes. His expression darkened. “You were with a human?”