Beauty and the Beast

4

The scent of tulsi stopped her in the tracks. The kind of tulsi wasn't found in forests.

Chenchita felt restless the moment the scent filled her head. Her heart racing faster than a horse. Tugging towards that scent.

"Chenchita, listen. Don't." Aja shouted to stop her but she took off running, trying to find the source of that scent. The restlessness didn't let her stop and heed her brother's call. The voices calling her all became incoherent to her at the registration of that scent of sandalwood and Tulsi.

She kept running through the forest to find where the scent was coming from. The speed with which ran made it difficult for others to follow her.

The rain made the forest floor slippery. She didn't care through. The place where the Naga bit her was bleeding but she couldn't feel it. The slippery soil, made her slip, a few times, injuring her already injured ankle. The pain too didn't register in her brain. She didn't know what overtook her.

Her heart raced fast like the scent was pulling her like a magnet to itself. The scent was coming from the hill, she trekked up while running. Her foot slipped, the rock broke and she fell off the hill. The height wasn't very high but surely would break her bones. She caught hold of a tree root. Though it began to slip from her hands with water flowing down the root.

Her hand slip, she braced herself for the fall but she felt someone hold her. She looked and a lion came face to face with her. Technically, it was just the lion head. He did have hands with thumbs allowing him to catch hold of her. Also, he had proper legs. The force of fall almost made him fall too. The luscious yellow dhoti got dirty with mud.

What captured her attention were the eyes. The eyes on the lion face was so familiar that she couldn't stop looking at him. She realised the scent of tulsi came from him. Tulsi and sandalwood.

Her heart raced fast. At the point, she had no idea if it was because she ran so fast or because of him.

Although the lion eyes seemed scary to look into but it wasn't fear that she felt. It was almost as if she would cry. Not out of fear or distress. But the tears that fall out when you see a loved one after so long. An odd kind of peace filled her. The silk he wrapped around his waist and legs were too familiar but she couldn't explain how. The touch was extremely familiar but she couldn't explain how. It almost burned her skin. Like she was on fire from that touch.

Those shoulders too familiar, that dark skin felt as familiar as the sky is to the moon. The warmth emerging out of his skin invited a whole different reaction. Something totally alien to her. Her chest feeling heavy. His gaze so familiar. The wild eyes seemed so soft when it touched her as if the lion-eyes registered what flowers feel like to humans.

"Chenchita!!!" Though her ears caught it, her brain didn't register it.

He looked at her and as if suddenly all the rage melted away. His heart felt the peace. All the restlessness and remnants of the pain which reached him through the suffering of his people. All of it disappeared like someone finally applied sandalwood to his burning up body.

Sri.

She had come for him. The one who melt away the any pain or suffering.

She stared at him as he spent a little long before the mirror. The dhoti around his waist was fixed but he couldn't decide which jewellery set to wear. His face twisted in confusion. He sighed a bit.

She just smiled.

"Are you going to just stand there and watch?" He asked her. He turned and showed her the four sets he picked out. "Which one?"