The fight was on, there was never a doubt about that. And she had in her heart the slight smugness that comes from having the upper hand in a fight - from being the one who has been slighted, the one who can afford to take the moral high-road and be forgiving. He had called her on a busy day at the office, and bawled her out. For a reason, true, but still. Her smugness mixed with rage and self-pity to produce a faint aura of martyrdom.

However, she did notice, rather worriedly, that one thing was missing. The frightening, vertigo-inducing fear that took hold of her every time a fight interrupted her relationships. The feeling of standing on the very brink of a cavernous chasm and wondering when the wind would blow her off the edge. She felt that angst and fear every single time, irrespective of how serious the tiff was. Where was it now?

Was it absent because this relationship was for keeps? Which meant, irrevocably, that every tiff must end in a kiss-and-make-up? Or was the absence an early indicator of the ennui that creeps into relationships that are tagged with the word 'forever'? Was it, then again, a fallout of "true love"? Of knowing, as hordes of self-help books put it, that "true love forgives all, is unmindful of slights and insults, and unknowing of everything but itself"?

She had all the answers right there in her thoughts, and that was precisely why she had no answers.