The summer vacations had started. Vyani was lying on her bed, scrolling through some random reels, mostly including the ones where they recommend movies to watch when you are bored, dishes to cook when you are hungry, or DIY room decor to make when you want to give your room a makeover. She kept saving them all; maybe in the future she would get in the mood to try one of those instead of scrolling through more of them. She had just scrolled through a reel of a guy training his dog how to join paws before her mother called her for lunch.
“Bring the black salt from the kitchen while coming,” her mother said, her bangles tingling around the dining room as she opened the cooker filled with yellow pulao glistening with a strong smell of cinnamon and ghee. Adbhut was setting the spoons on the plates, while her father was surfing through the TV to put on something interesting.
Vyani went to the kitchen and opened the second drawer on the middle shelf to get the box of black salt. Before her fingers touched the steel box-
“Come with me, we are going to the middle world,” Tis appeared out of nowhere and said.
She looked at him, first startled, but then his presence settled in. It was usual now, him appearing out of nowhere.
“I am very hungry, and the pulao smells very tasty, so later, Tis,” she said casually, picking the box with her.
“It wasn’t a request,” Tis said before going out to the veranda and giving her a look which screamed, "Follow."
Vyani sighed, too hungry to be following his orders. Before she muttered some curses to him or to herself, the smell of pulao didn't fade as she kept the steel box on the counter and followed Tis outside. She wondered her mother would probably wait for the black salt more than she would wait for her, but it's not like she deserved that. She didn't deserve to feel the warmth of motherhood after killing someone's child.
They were halfway up the green stairs when Tis looked back at her. She was tying her hair up with the blue hairband she had in her pocket from the morning.
“Behave there,” Tis said.
Vyani looked at him, half listening to him, half looking down at the small city beneath her black clogs before she replied, “What did I do?”
“I mean, you can't start crying out of nowhere. I am someone important in there,” he explained without looking at her.
“Tch. For a second I thought you meant, behave as in don't kill somebody there. Good advice for a murderer like me,” she said, smiling with no teeth and putting her hair behind her ears.
“That's what I meant when I said 'behave yourself,'” Tis said. He was tired of her bringing everything back to murder and blood. It was like scolding a child who keeps tying their shoelaces the wrong way again and again.
“I hate how easy it is for you to forget everything that happened,” Vyani said in an inaudible voice, pulling the skin around her fingernails.
Tis looked back this time, narrowing his beautiful eyes in a way Vyani didn't recognise. “Because I don't keep visiting the grave I dug. Why can't you just move on? You said you were depressed because of how his family and your sister would be feeling, but now I fixed it, didn't I? I can't work with you if you keep doing this, Vyani.”
She looked down, shaking her head, her voice breaking. “I-I know. I don't want to do this too. I am trying to forget it, can't you see? I didn't think of him since morning, but then you started this. You started talking about how I should behave.” Vyani started breaking down, and before Tis could reply she cut him off. “Why should I behave? When did I even behave in a way that's not 'normal'? I never sneaked out of school, never went absent on the day I had morning assembly duties even though I was fucking sick, always apologised first in every fight I had with anyone. In what way am I not normal, Tis? Just because of this one mistake, how did I lose my right to be called normal?” she said in a breaking voice before her hands started wiping her eyes.
“You should figure out what is not 'normal' in you. I am not here to fix you. I have more important things to do, and if you think you did something so much wrong and now you can fix it by crying and whatever you do by bringing that dead guy into every sentence, you can't fix it. Even the Creator can't bring him back. He is gone, and if you want to die just because you killed him, then you are useless to me. It's not about you, human, it's about me,” Tis replied in a stern voice without a pause before he kept walking up and left her alone.
Vyani clutched her clothes hard, like it was the most important thing right now. Like she forgot she was above and didn't know how many meters from the world, and the one who brought her here went ahead without her.
After a minute of trying to swallow the lump in her throat, she moved her legs above, trying to follow Tis, but deep down she knew she had already lost him. He was doubting her too, like she does.
The green fog covered her eyes when she took the final step and reached the middle world. Tis was nowhere visible. She dragged herself towards the “Pond of Prayers,” as Tis calls it, because it was the only way she knew in the middle world. The pond was filled to the top, but the water was transparent and light. As soon as her eyes saw the peak of the pond, Vyani removed her slippers and stepped into it, just like she did last time. It felt so light, like her body was a plastic polythene bag in the air. Soon her arms flung, and she dipped her palms into the water too. It felt surreal. She took the water beneath her fingers, collecting it before she brought it to her face, and suddenly her vile brown hands turned red, as if drenched in dark maroon blood, and her throat screeched.
“Aaaaaaaa—”
Before her body instinctively threw the water into the air, and her eyes crinkled with the same pain they had been going through the whole week, she fell into the pond.
“And that's why you should learn to use that Hucia of yours.”
Vyani barely heard a voice when she saw Amris and her beautiful curls looking at her from the bank of the pond.
“Did you hear me?” she repeated.
“Ye-Yes, I did.” Vyani hesitated and checked her hand again. It was neither red nor drenched. It was a normal human hand with the green sunlight kind of glowing upon it. She stood back on her feet. Her clothes weren't wet, just cold, which was unusual, but so was this place.
“Come here, child,” Amris said, her already green gown shining with the light falling upon it.
Vyani went towards her. “Uh, I came with Tis, but I don't know where he went now.”
“Don't you worry, he does what comes to him. You tell me, what's the cause?”
“Huh? Cause?” Vyani proceeded towards her, sitting on the ground next to her where she was hovering.
“Yes, what did the Arv show you?”
“'Arv'? What's tha—?”
“This.” Amris pointed to the pond. “This is Arv. It's the water containing the prayers of beings like you from all kinds of worlds.”
“Oh, yeah. Tis told me about that. I-I just blanked out or something. I mean, I thought I was holding blood in my hands or something. Uhm, do you know about what I did?” Vyani asked, looking at her discreetly through the corner of her eye. It was hard to look at her. She glowed like a dim bulb, and her face was nothing like how she imagined, even though it was her own imagination.
Amris nodded. “I heard you perished as a human.”
“Yeah, yeah, I did. It's terrible. Now that I heard it from someone, it's horrifying I could do something like that,” Vyani said, her hands on her eyes.
“Child, child, you are proving Tis correct. I believed in my own judgment when I said you are good for this position,” Amris said, nodding at her with disappointment.
“I-I know. I am not made for this job. I can't do it. I already told this to Tis, to even the Creator, but you people don't listen.”
“Proof is swimming beside you, darling, that we listen,” Amris said, pointing her imaginary finger at the pond and making it glow more.
“That's not what I mean, Amris. Or do I have to call you Ma'am because that's how you all are treating me, like I am your employee! It's better to be dead than this.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Vyani quickly pulled her hand from the water and put it in her pocket.
“I see more than Tis, human, and I don't speak his language. No one will be more disheartened than I if you were to give up right now. I see you more than Tis, and somewhere you do too. That's why you choose to see me as a body similar to yours. Don't hesitate, child. Speak your mind. I am all ears, as you say it.”
Vyani looked at her for the first time in the whole conversation. “I-I don't know, but you sound better than him. Amris, I have no idea how to handle this all. I killed someone. It's not simple. I killed someone, and now the world doesn't remember him. I don't know how to deal with this.”
“You keep repeating that you can't deal with it, but yet you dealt with it. Okay, let me tell you something. Many activities in this universe are inevitable. They happen because they are bound to happen. You will achieve nothing by crying over your work on a Monday morning. Instead, you can just go in.”
“See, you didn't understand. I don't understand how you can compare me murdering someone to going to work on a Monday morning—”
“Because both are inevitable—”
“No!! How is me killing someone inevitable?—”
“Because it already happened! Because people aren't dying for the first time, child. They have done this for centuries. Just because your hands look red today doesn't mean the world is cleaner than you.”
“It's not like this!”
“It sure is like this. You must believe in me.” With that, Amris took the water from the glowing pond and poured it on Vyani's head. “You feel less scared now. You are more of us now, less of a human.”
Before Vyani could react, she felt the lightest she had ever felt, and her eyes closed themselves as she fell onto the ground they were sitting on.
“How long would this work?” Tis came from behind, picking her body up with his spells as it floated in the green atmosphere.
“Given how much I did, it won't last long.”
“But I told you to pray for her to lose human tendencies and weaknesses.”
“Exactly, I did, but Arv won't allow it. You know we can only pray within a limit, unlike these creatures.” She pointed to Vyani.
“If we prayed like them, then this wouldn't be a pond, it would be an ocean,” Ross came from behind.
“I should put her back before anyone notices. You sure this would work, Amris?”
“Depends on how human she wants to be,” she replied.
“Are we really doing right? Would diminishing her humanity keep her safe?” Ross questioned.
“We are just making her ready for what comes ahead,” Amris said, standing up.
“I can do it. It's my work. I already got so much help from you two. Now I can handle it,” Tis said, picking Vyani up as she floated in the air under his spell like a puppet on a string.
They both nodded before Tis left with Vyani.
Tis nodded before proceeding to take Vyani with him.
ns216.73.216.67da2
→ Request update
and then Add to home screen.