Nothing's Conventional About Us

XVI ~ Sienna

Sienna is not the fairest of colours.
Nor is it the most threatening one.
Well, not for blind eyes. 
When I see sienna bleed 
Into the cyan of the sea,
I can tell that 
The lava is next. 

Sienna

The dinner would have passed in an uneventful silence - occasionally cracked by the clinks of cutlery like occasional clinking of marbles upon glass - if not for King Dhritarashtra's deliberate throat-clearing. 

While others either immediately or gradually looked up from their plates, a certain couple who were lost in each others skin and aura and fragrance - their hands held beneath the lush satin of the tablecloth - snapped their eyes from their plates to the ageing king's face in a split moment and looked at him with such coldness that the king actually shuddered in his seat without even looking up to meet their eyes. 

Maybe this was how looks could, after all, kill. 

The King took a moment to compose himself, during which five other males in the room pursed their lips till they were numb in order to stop themselves from bursting into peals of laughter. 

The King of Anga tried - truly tried - to catch the eyes of the Princess who had already been labelled as the Princess of Ice amongst the other royal girls, if only to see if any trace of the warmth he had been bestowed with the other day, in that one smile, remained in any layer or depth of those dark irises. Or, maybe, to see if they would make him shudder too. 

Needless to say, his efforts were to no avail. 

The Kuru King finally regained enough composure to speak, his voice teetering on the very edges of 'clear', and his eyes carefully averted from the unbothered, icy gazes that he could feel on the side of his face. 

"My honoured guests", he began and everyone on the table showcased their own respect by bowing their heads - the couple in question merely tipped their chin down by the width of a finger - before the King continued, "The past couple of days have been a matter of utter joy. We have been - are and shall always be - extremely overjoyed to host you all in terms of such amicable ties between all our kingdoms."

And while the crowd cheered the beautified opening of the speech, like a serpent, the King's dark eyes slid to the two faces that had kept his sons bothered for quite a while. That had kept his dearest eldest son awake for the better part of the previous night. 

His eyes met faces so straight, eyes so well-guarded that he himself was caught off-guard for a while. A man, so well-guarded - such restraint was surprising, but not impossible, in a warrior of Arjuna's stature - he could somehow still digest. 

But a woman - this heartbreakingly, unbelievably beautiful, graceful and endowed with every quality one could imagine a woman to possess - this cold, this perilous, this calculative, never giving a single thing away... No, he had never so much as heard this before. 

He had read of Lady Sita, the revered wife of Lord Rama. He had heard of how, time and again, she had turned down every threat and proposition of the Demon King, while captive, alone in a place dripping with dark magic. But he had also heard of her heartbreak, her tears, her sorrow. 

He had read and heard of her heart. She had one. No matter how strong, how great, she certainly did have a heart. Her rage, her grief, her determination, her greatness - all of it came from her very heart. She had visible emotions. Even when they were firmly against someone, they were emotions. 

But this woman... He sometimes could not help but wonder if she was even a person, after all. Such precise coldness. She was like the sharp, honed edge of some Divine sword, given life by a magic so deep, so ancient that no one could dare read into it. That face, those dark eyes, never gave indication of the existence of a heart.