अन्तः अस्ति प्रारंभः।
The end is the beginning.
A caterpillar dies, to birth a butterfly. Water evaporates to rain down. Dead carcasses fill the stomachs of vultures.Life gives way to death and death to life. In a vicious circle of different karmas...
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Rukmanetra had seen the most beautiful and the most glorious parts of the glamourous world of the royal life. He had seen and felt the shine of gold and silk, he felt the slide of silk against his back as he walked through the courtyard.
And yet, when Mihira looked at him, she knew that he was not a man of glamour. Of glory, yes. But of gore.
He was a man thriving on the sheer idea that he is needed.
She tested him, multiple times. She knew she shouldn't have, she shouldn't be playing with fire that is the ire of a man with power, but Mihira could not help herself.
Vicious blood shall always remain vicious and all that.
In Kaliyug, she had made an art of knowing. Knowing people, their traits, their ideas, their morals, their weapons, their fighting styles. She had known and she had used it to her advantage at every chance she had. So much, so that at point she had even been bored of the games she played with the murderers that terrorised her city.
Mihira had learnt how to control people. How to make them so what she wished. By force or by thought alone.
So, when she saw that Rukmanetra mimicked the actions of people that surround him, she eyed him ever more carefully. It helped, that every week, like clockwork, they would find each other at the balcony. Mihira visited the place every day, sometimes alone and sometimes with Eklavya, just to think over her life.
She hadn't been able to get her hands on the completely authentic source of the Mahabharata epic and she hadn't been able to figure out the exact timeline of the war. She wasn't aware when the dominoes would start falling.
Mihira wondered if she could live her life like that, staying with Maitri until she found a house for herself, coming to the palace for accounting work every day, having lunch with Saini, leaving for the Board of citizenship department to get citizenship in the state, have a walk with Eklavya, and return to Maitri's house. A quiet life.
And yet, something in her ached for the very thought of adrenaline. She wished to brandish her machete at someone and she wished to claw at someone the way her scarred shoulder throbbed everytime she looked in a mirror.
She hid her scarred shoulder under her blouse and she hid her ache for blood under her tongue, like the thought for venom.
Perhaps that was why she tested and studied Rukmanetra like so. If she couldn't get her hands bloody, she would at least like to have her mind racing.
Ever since the moment she realised his subconscious habit of mimicking the actions and habits of people around him, his behaviour made much more sense. Mihira had always been receptive of whatever feelings one deposited to her and since Rukmanetra had been suspicious of her, she had just doubled it and grew it in resentment and he copied her.
It was glorious.
Perhaps this was why, she sought him out, once a week. She knew enough to know that he was a man of routine, and he spent at least an hour in the evening on the balcony. And he had proven not to hate her presence.
