HELLO MAHABHARATA

61. Xenization

(n.) the act of existing as a stranger/ to walk as a stranger

PARTH SLIPPED HIS SCARRED FINGERS ON HER NAPE SUPPREPTITIOUSLY AND LINGERED A KISS ON HER FOREHEAD, falling for those adamant curls fondling her face. He watched her smiling face brimming with only love as she watched the baby crawl on the knees, cachinnating everytime the white pieris rapae butterfly sat on the pink nose after its rotation from fuschia blooms to the bundle of joy on the lush carpets of dewy grass.

His wife was the happiest around kids and he had wondered if she will love their offspring more than him, he was immature during that heat of lover's moment and marriage-drunk phase. He loved his child more than anything in this vast universe, to die a thousand times merrily if he has to. Perhaps, there shall be rivalry between the lurching of the baby and sounds of his wife's intoxicating laughter, a competition to win the foremost position in his love. Lords, he was again doused in contests and accolades.

Everywhere engulfing him was just ataraxia. The yonder was in summer tinctures as doves were flying near the sun, the burbling lake was an abode to swans who were complimenting the valley of fuschia flowers. The laughs of his wife and garbling of his baby was melody, superior than any of the nectar eutony of apsara to him as they were in Parthjayavan.

Suddenly, the earth beneath him cracked and he froze in consternation. The stygian and eldritch fog of midnight warped his senses. The baby began laughing loudly and a trail of blood appeared from the petal of lips. The svelte bud frame faltered in attempts of walking and fainted with a dangerous thud on the sandy ground of vittles. Frightened and losing his steady breathing, he turned cold and turned to his wife only to face another whammy. Parthjaya was smiling from her merlot painted lips and carbon kohl emphasized eyes staring at him. But she was splashed in crimson blood as if she was covered in pristine gashes and cuts of war. Her silks in opulent quartz were stained in scarlet, her anklets were no longer golden but gushing red with dripping convoys of blood. She whispered, "Save us, please. Will you my love?"

Sabyasachi woke up with a bolt of lightning sweltering in ivory sheets and velvet duvet, beads of sweat sprinkled on his bare silvery dusky skin as the ambient squall condensed him. He was scared such as he was trembling, those hands which tirelessly shoot pointed arrows were shaking and he clasped the sheening silk sheets in his fist. "Tell me you're safe, please. What was that? I apologise. I-I apologise. But what else could I've done at that moment? I can bear the spear of seeing you with someone else but never this-this covered in blood---What does this nightmare means?" He raked his wild fingers through his mussed but still luscious curls and joined his hands together. "Help her, I know you've always had and you always will. We are cursed to never bear a child, this baby in my dream---Stay with her I beg of you please help her"

He prayed as he had from eleven years for her.

The Pandava put his feet down on the misty and nearly absent floor, straining his grasps at the affluent bedstead sides embossed with carved lionesses. The archer's throat was parched as if he was thirsty and stranded on a desert so he reached out to the amphora of water and swigged it like a dehydrated and shrivelled man deprived of the life sustaining liquid. A garland of wilted and chartreuse turned mogra was lain dead on the gold table, its wafting icky and inebriating scent now infused with his own tangy sweat and fragrance of petrichor. "Urvashi" he mumbled the name and closed his eyes in a sheer scorn. How could she be so obdurate to spend a night with him? The celestial nymph had come to him during twilight with the invincible weapons of her irresistible seduction, claiming she is untied to any mortal relationships.

"Am I not beautiful enough? The gods stand in a queue just to have a glimpse of my dancing and you defy me? How are you so cruelly beauteous? You could've surpassed and ruled this divine kingdom if you were an apsara, that was the grace with which you were dancing in the court today, a warrior like you have smitten me by my senses. I desire you, accept me as your beloved, oh look how erotically the dusk struts around"