Nobody's daughter ~ Yrkkh Musings

1. Fear

Fear. Like a rock in her stomach and a twitch at the top of her spine, Kajal knew fear well enough. The weight of her mortality was tied to the very fear that carries her existence. The same fear that feels like a bitter slap in the face, each time she looks at her husband and his ever glaring eyes. Fear...when a part of her almost reaches out to her Ma sa, in a yearning for her unsaid pleas to be heard. Although did she even exist? She breathed, she consumed but what was her substance when her form is so devoid of anything but fear.

Abhira was different. Not in a way that her mortality bled golden or silver, in fact it was pale dark red. But to Kajal she seemed unreal, as if her name was carved in the ivory pillars of history when they paid tribute to bravery. Kajal couldn't think of doing what Abhira does, unabashedly voicing out her opinions, standing against injustice. Fear... If you ask Kajal, Abhira certainly didn't have any, or maybe she did, but unlike her, she wasn't consumed under the weight of it.

"Dard toh nahi ho raha", Abhira had asked, holding that unmatched innocence and tenderness in her eyes, when she helped Kajal wear those bangles that her husband had yet again weaponised as a tool to break her wretched heart, and remind her how empty her marriage was and so shall be her heart. That day, she was so overwhelmed by the weight of Abhira's kindness, she cried, she cried for the mother in her who couldn't be the sword and shield to her kids, she cried for the wife whose home was wrecked, she cried for the woman who once had dreams and she cried for her empty, lonely life.

But hope is like a stubborn child, it crawls into your lap and seeks to be tended to. And so she hopes, she hopes one day she will look at herself in the mirror and find the reflection of her husband standing behind her, not strangulating the life out of her, but affirming she was enough. She is aware of the impossibility of her hopes materialising into reality, but maybe this grief, and pain is what continues to tie her to mortality. And the day this rope breaks, all that would be left would be a hollow corpse.

But then, maybe there was someone who could put out the flames buring their houses. Fear...she feared if she screams loud enough in her own silence, would it reach Abhira, and she would pull the rain from the clouds, wage a war against the harbinger of plague, himself. Would she become her voice?
Perhaps, she would because Abhira had that need, to do the right thing, to save those who wouldn't or couldn't save themselves. She did not belong to the world, Abhira only belonged to herself, she spoke in a foreign language, one you would understand if you look into her eyes long enough. Fear... Behind the irises of her eyes, veiled, hidden behind her courage and again that pure innocence.

But then, Kajal also sees her family, their mortal rage, and their violent habit of stripping people of their senses, of their eyes, their ears, cease them from seeing, rendering them silent. To push people into the dark, conscious but cut off from their own reality.

Fear...for Abhira, Kajal feared that with each passing day, this family, including her, as irrelevant as her presence is, would dim her light. She feared this family would eventually and inevitably kill her spirit, render her silent and that would leave only a shell of her. Because Abhira is anything but silent. She is enragingly and annoyingly talkitive and lovingly, uniquely singular.

So for this god's child, Kajal fears and Kajal prays. She prays and prays, silently, behind closed doors when no one is watching. She prays for her light, she prays for her flight, she prays for her to hum and twirl and never belong anywhere to anyone but herself. She prays for her innocent heart to have a home, just not here, not among the vultures of her family.

Fear...when was the last time her prayers were answered?