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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Mihira is barely eight when she bites her own split lip in order to stop herself from shouting as she watches another dead body drop.
Mihira is ten when she rescues a fish. There is no clean water for the fish to swim in, not in Mihira's house, not the lake near the playground. The fish dies. Mihira's mother throws it out in the dead of the night but Mihira is awake and she moves toward the window and— Someone more desperate than Mihira's family is there. They eat the dead fish.
Mihira is thirteen when Shaili speaks her first works and says her name and Mihira begins to smile at random moments, thinking about how her sister called her Mihi in that sweet broken voice.
She gets her first scar when she's fourteen. Make no mistake, she had been hit before, and she had healed before. This was the first time she had been hit with a poisonous dagger. The venom did not allow the wound to heal properly and it left a scar on her right calf. Mihira wanted to burn the scar off. It reminded her too much of the man who gave that scar to her while trying to tear her clothes apart. Samar Veer had killed him, brutally, at the very moment when he found and rescued her but Mihira couldn't help but think that the man's blood had seeped into her open wound and she was tainted forever.
After Samar Veer dies, Mihira steals the trishul ring he always wore. She wears it everyday. She feels it tighten and leave a print on her finger when she curls her hand around his dagger. When she teaches Shaili how to hold a dagger.
Mihira is twenty four when they kidnap her and Shaili. By then, Mihira has seen more, has bore more, and has more scars. By then, Shaili, a pre-teen, knows how to slit someone's throat because Mihira was paranoid and taught her everything that Samar Veer and her father had taught her.
"Stop screaming," the leader of them all grounds out at Shaili, who squirms and snarls when she sees Mihira beaten in front of her. The jungle is dark, it's night, but they have illuminated the area just enough to put Mihira on the spotlight. Like a show. Her arms and legs and her throat are all tied intricately in steel chains. Another dagger presses to the front of her t-shirt, pointed down, in an attempt to rip it. Shaili screams.
They steel chains are in the way and the t-shirt doesn't rip as easily as it should have. A hand grabs her by her neck, where she's already bleeding. "Such a dilemma," the woman says,"We can't untie you, you would be rabid. And I can't send my boys home without a reward."
A man, probably a hybrid of a demon and a human, towers over her. "Let us go," she says, begs,"Please. I will never oppose you."
Shaili did something, probably moved, and someone backhanded her. She screams. The man turns to her and begins walking.
Mihira feels horrifying terror run in her veins. "No, no, no, no, not her! Take me instead! Cut my hands, cut my tongue, I won't oppose you, do anything you want with me— not her!"
The woman yanks the chain around Mihira's throat and continues pulling until Mihira feels her vision go blurry and her ears pop while Shaili keeps screaming.
