The Inseparable Princes

67. Over The Ocean

Everything had been going on very well. Hanuman had taken off, chanting the name of Rama, and as it always did, it gave him all the positivity and confidence in the world. He had flown quite a distance by then. He looked down as he saw a few creatures, dolphins, whales, and he thought he could even see some shimmering sea snakes, but looked back up straight. Not like he had anything to do with the snakes.

Well, the creatures didn't have anything to do with Hanuman either. But they were quite terrified. A large, humongous shadow passing over your head when you're simply doing the harmless job of going ahead with your life (which I do know that those creatures probably don't exactly have any other work, but that's none of our business)? That was definitely not entertaining in any way for anybody when this creepy creature decides to fly over your home.

The snakes mistook the flying creature for Garuda, who was their sworn enemy. They went all crazy and started running around, or slithering around, or (is it?) swimming around everywhere. Soon enough, they found out that the flying creature wasn't there for eating up all the snakes, because he flew away far too quickly for that.

Varuna looked at the mighty Vanara, who had easily flown long enough to be fatigued. It was pretty hot that day (and every other day too - towards Lanka, it's definitely NOT not-hot) but Hanuman seemed unaffected. Varuna also identified the Vanara to be a devotee or follower of one of the descendants of Sagara, who was one of the ancestors of Rama (isn't this so obvious? Like what am I writing). 

Varuna needed to offer rest to this man, and well, even if it would be rejected, he would still have to offer it. So, there was this one mountain called Mainaka. And now that it was very obvious that Varuna wanted to offer a place for Hanuman to rest, he approached Mainaka, who in his celestial form, decided to follow the orders.

All he had to do was increase his height. If only it was as simple as it sounded, but hey, they were celestials and could do whatever they liked, literally. So, he grew really tall and Hanuman noticed it, sighing.

"Why on earth would there have to be a constantly growing mountain on my way!" he grumbled to himself, but it wasn't too hard to get past it because, he just did what he had been doing for a real while then. He just flew. And flew past it, shattering the mountain, which meant he had shattered his first obstacle. "That was quite fun! These mountains are fascinating things! Maybe I should, after we have rescued Maa Sita, of course, try something out with these mountains!" he said to himself, some mischievous ideas popping in. Well, he was quite an expert at doing peculiar things with mountains.

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Surasa was the mother of the Nagas. Devendra, along with the other Gods, approached her, because they wanted to test Hanuman. They wanted to check if Hanuman was really capable of doing what he had been sent for. They wanted to confirm that he was the right person indeed for the job.

Surasa, thus, was asked by the Gods to assume the form of a horrifying, ugly demoness. As she followed, she stood before the path of the illustrious Hanuman. 

"You have been sent by the Gods to be my food, you know?" she said, her voice hoarse.

"Well, I did not know that! You just told me..." said Hanuman a little sheepishly.

"Enter my mouth!" screamed the demoness. Hanuman folded his hands, smiling subtly. 

"Sure!" he said, an eyebrow raised in what looked like some mischievousness. He grew his size by five times. She opened her mouth six times wider. He grew his size by eight times, and she did the same with her mouth by nine. He grew ten times larger and she opened her mouth even more to make it ten times larger. Hanuman furiously grew fifteen times larger than he was and Surasa only opened her mouth widely enough for Hanuman to enter.