Fleeting Moments-Ramayan Oneshots

The Missing Carving

A/N-I have mixed feelings about this one-

It all started with a small piece of wood. Well, that's a story for another day. No, it all started when Lakshman spotted a beautiful flower in the garden, and decided that this was the gift he was going to give his mother, Sumitra, for her birthday. Not the flower itself, mind you, but an infinite preservation of it; in simpler terms, Lakshman, the third-born Prince of Ayodhya, had decided to carve this flower out of a chunk of wood.

He was no stranger to carving. He loved to do it, despite all of his so-called toughly growled complaints about art, and detail, and time. He loved to carve things. He thought of it as a preservation of things that were soon to disappear. Lakshman was an ominous sort of a person. He thought everything would disappear someday, either everything would waste away soon, or he would.

The problem was, whenever he was making a birthday gift for anyone, his stupid, idiotic, good-for-nothing twin, Shatrughan would always pop up and try to surprise him. Normally, he never succeeded (Lakshman prided himself in being never scared of anything in life). Or, rather, the only thing he succeeded in was accidentally making Lakshman drop the knife and cut the carpet and/or cut himself. Usually, it was and.

Well that day, he was determined. No twin of his would ever disturb him! And that was why Lakshman, hidden away in his private chambers (which he had only received after a lot of begging his mother, who wanted Shatrughan and him to have the same room on accords of camaraderie. How Lakshman wanted to tell her that they could never be good friends, because as soon as that natkhat earned his trust, he would do something stupid like paint his face with red or something.

-----O----

Ram, the first-born, was busy. Ram was always busy. This or that. He was the crown prince, after all, and at sixteen years old, fresh out of his school, Ram had many duties, especially from his father, Raja Dasharath, who insisted upon teaching him every single thing there ever was to know about ruling. Lakshman ran up to him, holding something behind his back. "Yes?" Ram asked calmly, setting down his bow. 'What is it lakshman? I haven't seen you so happy in...." Ram trailed off. "Ever."

Because there Lakshman was, beaming at him. And then Lakshman held forward a delicately carved rose out of wood. Ram took it with wide eyes, examining it before clapping Lakshman on the shoulder. "Papa has invited me on a one-on-one hunting trip, and bhaiyya, could you keep it safe please?" Ram nodded, and Lakshman ran off again, before retracing his footsteps back.

"You see bhaiyya, I'm only trusting you with this because Shatrughan would have lost it for sure, and Bharat would have been too busy painting that he might have even splattered blues and greens over it, and Maa Sumitra loves red, so I need to paint it red, because a blue rose is a useless rose so-" Ram pushed him towards the way of the forest before Dasharath accidentally rode off impatiently, forgetting about his son.

-----O-----

Ram set the statue on the nightstand beside his bed thoughtfully, before walking out of the room. "I wonder why Lakshman was so overtly happy." he murmured to himself. "I mean, he likes hunting, but he does that all the time. So why was he so happy today?" And suddenly, the answer clicked. "That must be it! Lakshman's never been hunting only with Papa before! It must be exciting!" Ram scratched the back of his head. "Which is weird, seeing as he's fourteen and the most enthusiastic out of all of us."

But Ram stopped pondering this and began to walk around the hallways of the palace once more, trying his hand at supervising and monitoring the peace. The palace in Ayodhya was always a pleasant place. If the thousands of people the palace employed were no attestment to it, then the steady and excited buzz of chatter that was produced in each and every room, from the sizzles of boiling oil in the kitchens to the carefree humming of the gardener-well, if Ram knew one thing, it was that the palace would never be quiet.