~the torment from a sin~

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Anamika's P.O.V.

~~~

I was woken up from my slumber when a hand softly touched my shoulders.
I opened my heavy, burning eyes to find Aaghyaa standing in front of me with a tray.

Ouch.
I bit my lip to stifle the cry of pain.
My back hurt when I tried to get up.
Hearing my wince, she put aside the tray on my bedside table, grabbed my arm and helped me sit up straight on my bed.
She adjusted the pillow so that my back got a comfortable support from it.

Next, she reached out to the tray and handed me a thermometer.
I took it obediently from her and placed it under the tongue in my mouth.
After a minute and a half, I handed it back to her.

A soft sigh came from her when she looked at my temperature.

"It's 100 degree Celsius.", she said.

"Oh.", I said with a sickly sniff.

She placed a hand on my neck to check the temperature herself, her cold skin feeling like an ice against mine.
I shivered and pulled the warm, thick blanket over my shoulders.

"God, you are burning up.", she stated robotically.

In answer, I sniffed wet-ly yet again.

She reached to the tray again and handed me a turquoise blue ceramic bowl.
Hot fumes arose from the surface and when I touched the utensil, the warmth of spread from my cold, frail palms to the whole length of my body.

She switched off the fan, which was already on the least possible level, and I stopped shivering.

Aaghyaa indicated for me to shift a little towards the other side.
When I did what she asked me to do, she sat beside me on the bed.

I glanced at the warm soup in the bowl and put a spoonful of it in my mouth.
The tangy flavour of the tomato soup was perfect in terms of deliciousness and also on the groud of the warmth it provided to my chilled-from-fever body and calmed my sore throat.

"It's delicious. I didn't know you can make one.", I said and took another slurpy spoonful of it.
My voice was rough either from the fever or from the cough.
I don't know.

"You need to learn how to make food on your own when your mother does nothing of that sort.", she said with such spite in her voice that I looked at her.

The hate on her face was noticeable and she did absolutely no efforts to hide the same.

"Why are you like this?", I said with a quiver in my voice.

My daughter.
My own daughter has no love for me.
I am alone.
I am so alone, even when I am sick.

"I could ask you the same question.", she said, looking right into my eye.

"What? What did I ever do to you to receive this kind of behaviour, huh? Why are you acting like-"

"You ask me what you have done? Let me ask you what I have done to receive this much hatred from you? To your own daughter? What did the ten year-old Aaghyaa ever did to you?"
There was a crack in her voice.

"What are you talking about?"
I knew what she was talking about.
But I had no idea that she still remembered it.
Because that was the biggest mistake of my life.

"Don't act so naïve and innocent. You very well know what you did that day. Everyday leading up to today, I can't ever think of a reason what I ever did to induce such kind of malice towards your own daughter. And you know what? I have stopped asking the question about my worthiness and position in your life to myself a long time back. Because you don't even deserve the amount of thought that goes into that."

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