Return of the Asuras |Lesbian Story| (The Sequel)

Chapter 32

One last time, Amarisa and the handmaidens washed my body with sweet-scented water and weaved flowers through my hair. I was adorned in beautiful golden silks with golden shoes. When the bearers came for my body, Amarisa's eyes still as glass, watched them taking me away on the funeral litter.

When the night came, the procession started in a solemn quietness. The broad avenues were lined with women and men. Their candles and torches were lit to brighten the way. All the divine children were there, dressing in mourning clothes of pure white. The very thought of parting with my faithful friends caused me genuine sorrow.

Through the city's gate, people joined in with their lanterns. From above, they would look like a tiny glowing ant colony moving through the path. My poor services to their beloved homeland had become known to them, and it was evidenced by the loud crying of my name, and by the loads of offering flowers, they tossed in our path as we passed by. Even in the face of the ferocious appearance of my mount who walked quite sorrowfully beside my chariot didn't stop the populace from pressing close.

Foot soldiers went ahead and mounted soldiers took the end of the procession, going southwards from the city. The elephants wept and the horses neighed as if they too were grieving.

Upon reaching the destination, the riders at the front went separate ways, and the procession opened with the mourners forming a ring around a stone structure.

It was built on a high mound like a tomb. Each stone was put in place just as I had seen it in my time. It felt like a lifetime ago. The craftsman had carved out a seven-headed Naga that could be seen from the sky. In a distance, the site looked like a rounded hill with a set of staircases leading up to the top.

There we saw the oracle carrying the moonstone in his hands.

I realized that they had constructed the very gateway between my world and theirs.

But I wasn't ready to leave.

I still marveled at this grandiose city, the magical kingdom, and its golden temples and silver-roof palaces, the flowering flame-blossom trees, the indigo haze of the distant mountains, and the beautiful faces of my loved ones. I wanted to be with my dear friends and stay with my princess.

Too late. The pyre was already built atop the spiral. The bearers already laid my body on it.

The Hora and the Guru stood with the King and Queen and their high priests. They formed a circle around the mound as others came to bid their final farewell. Amarisa kissed me one last time.

"May your journey be smooth and swift," she whispered. "If fate has mercy, may we meet again in another lifetime and forever."

The priests raised their conch shells and brew.

Amarisa did not weep as she watched them bringing out the funeral flame. She watched the fire stir to life, surrounding my body until I mingled with its thousand red tongues.

She thought she was ready to let go, but the memories of us tugged at her heart and a new wave of grief and despair overcame her. The princess burst out crying and screaming my name. The maids and her mother held her back as she fell to the ground, sobbing.

I felt myself slipping further from the physical world, fading to only the thinnest thread of existence in the air. I could not say another goodbye.

The Hora and the Guru chanted a prayer, which swelled in the air. The sky became darker as the stars disappeared. The moon coming of the clouds. The priests increased their chanting while the others watched the same miracle in awe.

A bright piercing light burst from the crystal stone as the moon hung over the spiral. Every ring and pattern glowed and rotated as a violent storm was taking place.

When the whole area was immersed in this divine light, everyone got down to their knees and bowed their heads.

Only a handful witnessed my ashes being caught in the wind, turning into golden particles, like tiny grains of sand. Hundreds, thousands, millions of small pieces that once was me rode on the light and up into the night.

~*~

It was dark when I opened my eyes again. I began to feel my body moving as I breathed. In front of me was a small patch of the moonlit sky.

"No," I whispered. I rose to a sitting posture and the sight that greeted me filled my heart with consternation. A new landscape met my gaze. The mountains in the distance, the almost stationary stars hanging on the horizon. Everything else was forested. Deep and dark trees stood all around me.

Then I saw people, familiar people. They were getting up from the ground, looking disorientated and confused. Something bad must have happened just a moment ago.

"Nikita!" a familiar voice called to me. I could scarcely believe my eyes, but the truth slowly forced itself upon my senses.

"Father," I gasped. He came and put his arms around me.

"Are you alright?" he asked. "They're gone. It's okay now, Nikita. You're safe."

Did I return to my own time? My own world? Or did I lose consciousness and was trapped in a dreamland?

I pulled away and looked at my body, feeling myself over from head to foot. Everything was solid. I was still alive.

"What..." I whispered in confusion.

"You didn't remember?" my dad asked, looking surprised. "There was a robbery and there was a strange storm. Then I found you here. I didn't know much of anything else myself. It was so strange. Everyone seems as confused as you."

I looked around me and realized I was still sitting on the spiral, which looked different now, ancient and unaligned, once again an incomplete masterpiece. And there was no more Chandramoki Moni.

Burying my head in my hands, I turned, broken, and sorrowful down to the marrows of my bones.

My father took it as a sign of distress after a horrible event. But he did not know that somewhere beyond our reality, a distant past existed, that my Amarisa was grieving for me, and her beautiful body lay on the ground not far away from this very stone earlier.

I was consumed by heartache once again.

Since that trip, I had waited and prayed to be taken back to the world of my lost love. I would rather lie dead beside Amarisa there than live in all this inconceivable distance from her.

As I sat in my little study overlooking the busy streets where cars whizzing about, just seven years have elapsed since I first opened my eyes inside the temple's pit.

Those seven years I went to art school and spent time perfecting my craft, almost forgetting the days and nights that passed. It all boiled down to an obsession to capture memories. Everyone and everything I'd seen. Some of the works I sold gave me enough mean to keep working on my art. I kept most of them though. All two hundred and fifty pieces of Amarisa in every angle.

Tonight, the full moon was large and bright, shining through my window. I looked up at it and thought I could see her shining in the surface of the moon itself, but now she seemed to call to me again as she had not called before since my saddened return.

I thought I saw, across that awful abyss of time and space, a beautiful black-haired woman standing in the garden of a palace, by her feet was a huge yellow tiger while she looked into the sky and at the same brilliant moon.

The light felt like her soft hand as if these pinpricks of light that were newly coalescing into the shape of fingers and palm, reaching out to touch my face. I reached up for her hand and imagined how surprisingly solid she was. A smile formed on our lips.

We cannot be separated.

In that summery night, through the faintest boundary between our worlds, I knew we would chance upon one another again, and the moon seemed to speak to me telling me that I shall soon have my wish.

~The End~