A MAHABHARATA RETELLING
~~~
All the other flowers in the garden were brought up to envy the rose. Maybe shun it even. And admire it, too.
Unusual ways. Too-red petals, too-sharp thorns, too-sweet fragrance.
If only each flower did not have a mind...
Lord, what will become of me Once I've lost my novelty?
~ Nothing New (ft. Phoebe Bridgers), Taylor Swift
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As soon as the Lady-in-waiting had left, Valandhara was astonished to see Draupadi wordlessly closing the book and keeping it aside.
She frowned, before the Empress's reassuring eyes soothed that tiny furrow between her brows.
"You are beautiful, Valandhara. I hope you would make your way into his heart soon enough.", her voice sounded so calm, so at peace when she said the words that the Kashi princess peered into her ethereal eyes, trying to find a trace of something odd.
Something.
Nothing. She found absolutely nothing.
"Why would you even say that?", the question was most brazen, "Or, is that mockery?", the last sentence slipped past Valandhara's lips before she could rethink it.
Her mother always told her that she spoke without thought too often, blurted out way too many things, was way too brazen at times. And speaking to the Empress like this? She would have earned much more than just a glare from her mother.
Draupadi took a deep breath and leaned back on the headboard, her eyes briefly closing, and for the first time Valandhara actually saw the vestiges of exhaustion that lingered beneath her eyes or in the way that her next smile seemed more strained.
"It is strange, you know, how people expect co-wives to be so jealous of each other.", the Empress spoke and Valandhara found herself being drawn in more and more by the lilt of her voice, by the raw honesty in her words.
Draupadi sat up straight again, her eyes fixed on Valandhara's.
"Do you honestly not know that you are absolutely beautiful with those gorgeous brown eyes of yours?", Draupadi breathed, the Empress's dark eyes wide and locked on her, and Valandhara just sat there, staring at the woman that she had heard to be arrogant, self-centred, haughty, discriminative and even some colourful attributes regarding her having five husbands. And in that moment she was truly having a hard time believing either the rumours or the person herself.
But how do you ignore what has been laid out in front of you, open for plain sight?
How could she ignore the way something warm slithered down her spine, and heated her skin? The Empress's grace, and Draupadi's eyes - no, they were two different thing entirely.
"You must have heard stories of Subhadra's welcome.", the Empress's smile was testing, as if it weren't her words or her smile or her gleaming eyes that mattered, but Valandhara's reaction to it all.
This was no young, blushing bride forced into the responsibilities of life, Valandhara's mind whispered for a moment, The Gods do not play in weak hands. But the Empress's sudden smile was so dazzling that it scattered her carefully woven thoughts.
