A Bougainvillea Odyssey

Chapter-2

**Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, thus does not revolve around the real world. Any kind of words or incidents mentioned does not signify anything related to the real world. **

After the ill-fated and traumatizing night, Shivantika somehow managed to escape the soldiers. She decided to took a secret passage to flee. The secret passage began from her mother's chamber, thus rushed towards it, to look for that vase.

When she reached the chamber, she quickly did so, as her mother told her. And as expected, the door to the passage opens, which was hidden on the wall like camouflage within the wall.

"Shh...! I hear voices from inside this room, let's check this as well. We need to find that princess or the master won't forgive us.", one of the soldiers of Braheshwat whispered, but loud enough to be heard by Shivantika.

Hearing this, she quickly enters and closes the door without giving it a second thought with tears flowing through her cheeks, her weeping in sorrow of losing the joys of the entire world. As the door is shut close, it appears such a camouflage that nobody could tell that there was a door on the wall.

Entering the passage, Shivantika realizes it is more of a tunnel. It was so dark that she couldn't see anything.

Suddenly, she hears something. On a distance, she saw a gate open. Some kind of light was coming out from there. It was the only way out of there, as it was a one-way tunnel. She moves towards the light and tried to see what was emitting that.

She rushes towards the light and BANG! She trips and falls down. This wasn't enough for her on that sorrowful night, that something bit her foot, too. She wondered it might be just some kind of insect, like a mosquito, and thus she continued moving and come out of that vast tunnel and follow the light.

Just when she wondered she was out of that tunnel like thing, she suddenly heard some voices of footsteps coming from back, she exclaimed and tried to run for her life, but she started to black out and saw her foot getting blue and fell on the ground and wondered that it might be her end now and she would be caught by the enemy's soldiers, and she closed her eyes. She later realized that other than the voices from behind, there were some other footsteps too, but those got closer to her. The footsteps belonged to a man. He picked her up and took her with him.

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The scene shifts to Shivantika waking up in a cottage like house. She regains her consciousness, however not fully awake. She is in a subconscious like state. She could hear everything happening around her, and also the man sitting beside her bed.

When she slowly opens her eyes, she could clearly see who that man was. He was in his late forties, wrinkles of old age around his eyes and mouth, wrinkled skin, black eyes, short beard and small moustache with small ingrown hair highlighting the edges. Actually, Shivantika knew that man.

Lying on the bed in a weak condition, she exclaims "MAMA!!" (*mama refers to the maternal uncle (brother of mother))

"Don't speak or it'll worsen your health. I know everything, the Maharaja and Maharani are gone and too is the kingdom. Everything is in chaos now, but you are safe here, for now", he says.

She was in the village, which she was supposed to reach, and also with the man she was to meet.

He was not her maternal uncle by blood, but he shared a bond with her mother, and was recognised as the Chief of the village of physicians and was called by the name Jairam Singh. Shivantika's late mother and her uncle were friends since childhood and they too were sworn siblings.

With a confused expression on her paled face she asks, "Mama, you are still alive. I am so at ease now. But how are you safe in a situation like this when everything has been destroyed?"