Freyja was happy, thank you very much. At least on the outside she was. She had no other option, no other way to be.
Freyja came from a orthodox, conservative family. A father, mother, sister and brother, grandparents too. She lived in a joint family where every member was pretty invested in each other's life. Not experimental at all, their lives were the very definition of traditional. Children spent a good chunk of the initial years of their lives studying, excelling at everything academic and extracurricular after which the boys went on to work either with family or at new places and girls started assisting women of the house and learning home-making.
Freyja was lucky in the sense that her family did not stop her from leaving the house without a chaperone. They had confidence in the upbringing they had imparted on Freyja and both her elder siblings. Besides, everyone knew Freyja left home only for one reason - to meet her childhood, lifelong best friend of 19 years and their next-door neighbour Astra.
Astra was the youngest child of her house. Unlike her chaotic yet weak-willed and submissive best friend, she was head-strong, stubborn and full of determination to do things perfectly in every aspect of her life. It wasn't that she was an incomparable beauty - there were more beautiful girls than her in the town but there was something about her that made people stop to stare. Maybe because of her almond shaped eyes, maybe because of her long flowing hair that was the darkest brown in the house and but shined like the darkest, burning stone at the base of all the world's molten lava in the sun. Or it might have been how, compared to all the girls in the surrounding area who were a beautiful olive shade, her skin was almost as if vats of milk were mixed in the olive of her skin making her look unreal.
Freyja never compared herself to Astra. Freyja was an average girl in her looks and her build. 5'2" height, brown hair with natural golden streaks in them, 36D chest that were too big and too heavy on her, a plumpy face with perfectly full lips. Some might call her more beautiful than Astra was but in her eyes, Astra was the most beautiful girl in the world. 5'4" height, almond shaped eyes and a straight nose, long hair that went to her waist, 36C chest that were just the right size and narrow lips.
Freyja's only worry in her life was the day her parents fixed her wedding. With all the traditional and orthodox beliefs and systems, she couldn't come down to share the most honest truth about herself to her family, worried that she had failed them. She could not marry. At least she could not marry a man. Never. She had spent a long time trying to understand herself but had only come to this conclusion - marriage meant sharing her body and the only person she could share her body with was Astra. No other boy, no other girl. And that is what confused her. Until the fateful day came and her entire family sat down to discuss and decided that it was time they actively started looking for a boy for their dear Freyja. Her elder sister had been married for 5 years with 3 kids to show for it. Her brother, her family thought, still had time to marry.
Freyja panicked the moment she heard and ran off to meet Astra. She had to tell her how she felt. Astra's parents were travelling to the neighbouring town as they usually did this time of the year. Very much like Freyja's parents, they had a strong, unbreakable trust in all their children and did not mind leaving Astra alone, as the keeper of their house for weeks on a stretch when they travelled with the rest of their family. Astra took pride in the role she played for her family in these weeks.
Freyja ran into the house calling her name.
