He knew about it when he was deep in conversation about a strategy.
He knew when he swallowed food down his throat.
He could feel the physical presence of that piece of parchment, like breathing flesh.
'There is a letter from Yuvrani Uttara.' A sleek and tiny servant had entered his tent when he was tending to a deep laceration. His elder brothers had passed a sly smile and he was pretentious enough to react aptly. He didn't want them to know that the letter made him feel everything but comfortable. There was a strong gut feeling of churned-up and unkept promises and the fear of heavy letdowns.
There was always a sense of hollowness inside him regarding his wife's condition. Her brother was martyred and Abhimanyu could not do a thing. Each time he got a battle wound, and every night he found he had more than ten, his bile raised up in his throat thinking of Uttara's promise and their unborn baby's heartbeat. And then he realized, maybe- the heart might not have started beating yet. He wasn't there to keep a record- to take care of his beloved.
All these thoughts vexed him. So he let Uttara's letter linger in the corners of the tent which smelled like the sillage of blood. He wanted to forget about it, it was just hours before the next dawn and he could surely stand the delirious ticking of the clock and the absolute howl of loneliness.
Five minutes later he had already sprinted across the room, his feet having a brain of their own. He forced open the bind and the very first line was smudged hazy, with words peaking out like kids listening to an unwanted conversation.
For a few minutes, he gazed harder, but could not read. The words slipped from the corner of his lips making no sense. He could not help but touch the strokes of her words- her shortcomings and perfections.
But then he shimmied himself back to his senses. The hue of the parchment was something like honey and fire- a mixture of orange and golden, and he couldn't help but think that his sweet wife could be thinking of spitting fire on the circumstances of their separation.
Words like 'Everything's fine' and 'I am so proud of you' were spilled like beads out of a fragile necklace, but only he could find the undertone of 'I am waiting' with almost every line. She didn't profess her love in any of those, it was a heavy barter- if the letter got ripped apart by the enemies on the way.
He could hear the bird's cheery song, it sang on the dawn. His muscles felt an alacrity he could not have felt from hours of sleep. Her words were intoxicating and the parchment snatched him away in a world where he could just smell the sweet scent of love and not the fumes of bloodied sand.
He wanted to write back. His stupor with the letter was resumed when he found that ink and quills were the last things he could find on hand right now.
He will write back positively the next night.
He will write to her with words that were raw and unabridged, the words she could bead in a strong string.
