wooing Meera Rai

I | w h y

I | w h y 

Meera Rai never believed in fairytales and happy endings. 

Why?

Because she never heard of any dark skinned girl get a happy ending. 

The boys and the men only chose beautiful girls to be their princesses. Not once did she heard about dark skinned girls getting picked or getting loved or getting their happy ending. 

Her grandmother made sure to drill it in her soul that her dark skin was never going to get a handsome, loving and charming Prince. 

She would have to settle with anyone who had pity on her and wanted her.

Little Meera Rai hated how dirty that made her feel. She complained to her mother, but she was too busy with her brothers to pay attention to her silly remarks. So she complained to her father but her father slapped her, asking her to stop troubling him because he had a long day. She was teased by her dusky brothers despite them not being fair either.

So she counted backwards from ten and ran away until she reached zero and cried.

Little Meera Rai had accepted that beauty was not dark and she was not beautiful.

Was that why she accepted his proposal? Because he chose her out of all of the beautiful fair women out there? Because he had pity on her and married her? Was that why she let him do everything he wanted to and never spoke a word about it? 

Marry and sleep with a devil and consider it a blessing?

Was that why she acted like an idiot despite being the most learned woman in her ancestral generations of women who never got a chance to step out of the kitchen? 

A fool.

Meera Rai never let her toxic family affect her independent lifestyle after that first mistake of hers. She got her PhD, she got her doctorate, she got a steady job as a High School Teacher and she got back her self-respect which she had managed to strip off for a man and the society. 

Meera Rai also got walls around her heart. 

She built them by herself, selectively and beautifully shielding her heart so no man could ever enter in even by mistake. She was not going to let anyone in, she was not going to risk having her self-respect shredded again. 

Fool Me Once, Shame on You. Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me  

Yet, here she was. 

Fooled once again. 

"This is not funny, Vi." 

She tried to not sound like a desperate, pathetic girl who wanted someone to pick her, choose her, love her. She tried to be that strong willed and headstrong Meera Rai who chose herself and built her dynasty. She tried to lift her head and not lower her gaze.

She really tried to not cry.

But her husband was not joking, was she? 

He was not joking.

Her husband of six months, whom she loved dearly, who was her pride, who was her whole life - stood with an expression that could put the devil to shame.

They had made love last night. They had consummated their marriage after six months only because she asked him to give her time. 

He was nothing but amazing in those six months. He was a man who put herself before him, he respected her boundaries, never forced himself on her, never touched her without consent and never let her sleep without a smile.