THE CHARMER • ♘ Mahabharat fanfiction ♘

[𝟏𝟓] ~ ☆ 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 : 𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓾𝓫𝓵𝓮 𝓲𝓷 𝓯𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓵𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓼 ☆

The rein of the horse was pulled as a gesture to stop him and eventually he came to a halt. The time was that of the late evening, when Arjun stepped again in the palace but today the evening looked devoid of its usual charm.

There were almost little to no earthen lamps lit up in the palace, giving it an aura of the dark night sky deprived of the heavenly stars. Arjun stepped inside and was met with the solemn darkness ornamented in the corners of the majestic building.

The palace walls that have always greeted him with prestige and delight, now looked gloomy and lifeless. The corridors, always reflecting the echoes of cheeriness were whispering the melancholic silence, the gardens appeared despirited and withered with sullen.

With each step he took, the feeling of eeriness became more and more evident. And he knew something ominous had surely taken place in his absence.

The speed of his strides grew impatient and with some swift turn around the corridors he reached near her room, his heart beating recklessly with a delusional ecstatic feeling. Which constituted him to wish, if only she would be standing there with her contagious smile that would draw away the tiredness of his exhausted soul, but he knew it was not possible.

Within some moments he reached in front of her chamber, but seeing his pitamah standing there along with his elder brother confused him, their faces had a sorrowful look that worried him. But when his ears picked up the faint sound of sobbing from within the chamber, his heart sank, the most deucedly horrific scenarios making their home in him.

With a fearful expression he entered the chamber and was greeted with an aura filled with devastation. Sahdev took slow steps towards his brother as if walking on egg shells and put a comforting hand on Arjun's shoulder "sh-she has departed for her eternal rest" he was at a loss for the right words to describe this unfortunate occasion.

Arjun couldn't believe it, to him it felt like a nightmare that he desperately wanted to end. With shaky breaths he moved towards her and sat beside her delicate and almost ghostly form, Sitara was sitting on the other side her face was stained with tears and residues of her surma, her eyes looking red, puffy and distressed from the heartbreaking event.

He was feeling guilty, thinking that if he would have come earlier then maybe the scenario would have been different. He carefully held Krisha's hand in his "I'm sorry, only if I would have been early then.." he whispered his guilt and apology with tears threatening to spill his unspoken agony.

Her hand in his felt way too cold, unlively and aloof, feeling like a distinct and foreign melody that had a tinge of vague familiarity within itself. He was lost somewhere in the realms of defeat, teeming with the gravity of doldrums, when he felt a spark of hope beating within her. It felt so restrained and muted, as if almost dreamy.

He again searched for that fade heartbeat that has brought his hopes back from the blur of emotional lesions. After sometime, which felt like an eternity he again sensed a faint movement of her nerves and this time he knew it's not fictitious "Nakul, check her nerves again" he requested in a solicit tone "I know I'm sounding reasonless, but just for once".

Nakul wasn't doubtful of his brother, but he didn't want to repeat those unfortunate words again that brought this melancholy. He held Krisha's wrist firmly while praying to his gods to show a miracle but to his despair he again found nothing, no hope beating within her but as he was about to leave her hand he felt something, a faint, almost an unrecognisable heartbeat and his face bloomed with jovial indoctrination.

"She's alive, she's still alive" he declared to everyone with an unmanageable smile and the whole room again erupts into a sea of hopeful starlight that whispers of the sun. Arjun immediately takes out the magical herb that he had gathered after a mouthful of adventure.