The sparkling Diwali

“This ought to be sparkly enough”, I added another line of the led strip. My eyes hurt from the constant flicker but who cared. I would mumble but my family wouldn't let me have that too.

“Just leave it, I will find some more decorative lights. I ordered online and they came yesterday too”, the excitement on my sister's face reflected a grimace on my face. “Who twirls and claps their hands on seeing so much of eyes-hurting artificial lighting. Hello! May be worry a little about light pollution this Diwali”, I talked within. Maybe my soul heard my heart's voice. Or was it my mind speaking? I could never make it out definitively.

“Throw me that you little devil. I will lay them out along the margins you penciled. No one can afford to miss the design”, I tried to colour down my sarcastic tone. Sometimes I feel like a devil who has nothing but a weapon of sarcasm which she wields incessantly, all the time with no concern for possible whiplash. Yeah backlash would be much softer.

My mother could have been a professional decorator-slash-designer in an alternate universe. And my sister a complementing and worthy assistant. But my disdain for too much cheeriness is incentive enough to keep away and be just another sheep in the large flock which comes to my house to celebrate Diwali.

“Na na, you go. You need to lay out the diyas along the railings, and the rangoli, and don't forget the perimeter wall”, she almost sounded authoritative. But it was actually a much better fit for me. I've always loved the calm of a lit diya. Something about how close to nature it is. Crude cotton wisps rolled to form wicks soaked in the home-pressed flaxseed oil. All that contained in an earthen pot shaped like a fat flame itself.

I took as many diyas as my tray could hold and started laying them down. After I was finished with the perimeter, I looked up and my eyes couldn't believe the magic. My whole house was sparkling like a diya surrounded by many little diyas. The gals did it! Oh how beautifully they mixed the artificial with natural. No clog out of place in an intricately beautiful sparkling machine. Yet a non-machine. Ethereal. How did I ever call it eyes-hurting!
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Prompt: Use the word "Sparkly".