KRISHAVYAYAM

29. The Damned Daughter

A/N : Voilence and gore. You have been warned.

The eerie dark dungeons of Dvaraka weren't able to scare her, but the evocation did, her mind against her did. The clangor of the iron manacles wounding around her reminded her of the humiliation hurled at her in the place which she was supposed to think of as her home. They acted like sizzling iron blades against her porcelain skin, almost making her scream blue murders. Almost.

"Sit there, woman, you have withered in the matter of a prahara," commanded the soldier who kept a check on her as he noticed the distant look in her barren eyes, her hands clutching the bars and the fatigue her flesh and blood screamed of.

"Withered." Kamalnayani repeated, a sober laugh erupting from her lips which almost made the former's soul jump out of his body. "Withered." she clapped, the manacles creating erratic sounds in the silenced cages. "Withered." The humor evaporated in thin air and was rather replaced by an agonizing crack of her voice, her face a clear mask of her emotions which seemed to have been slipping, the hope she desperately held onto like a lifeline crumbling in a million fragments by each passing moment. "Withered." she collapsed to her knees, several haunting scarlett eyes following her movements.

The colloquialism of the court constantly resounded in her ears, making every other memory a blurr. She wasn't even able to make out a sensible word out of her mouth. No defense came from her end as she silently held onto the tears stinging her lotus eyes with her head hung low. What evidence did she have even? Therefore she had just stood motionless, like a lifeless sculpture, petrified at the turn of events that mercilessly dragged her into the court of Dvaraka, amidst a number of alien people who saw their Maharani for the first time. A great way of introduction indeed.

"Hari shall not question me. The truth shall not," she muttered to herself, consoling her heart which bled like the wounded shoulder of the little one who referred to her as Maa.

Nobody would believe that the arrow which pierced the skin of Bhanu wasn't hers. For she was someone who had lived amidst shadows and knew malevolence  like a half-kin. Anwar so fashioned with flawlessness to cage her and hoodwink the others. She awaited another trial, assured that the next one would somehow prove her innocence. Perhaps death would have been better than those vile accusations hurled on her motherhood and the humiliation she was subjected to. Still she was, like a sage of immovable determination, witnessing how her life had grown into a never ending doom. A cycle of bygone curses and boons, of phtartic adventures and wondrous fairy tales.

Sniffling, she settled on the cold floor which sent her soles numb, holding onto the trinket that was the only source of hope in the moment, the sole piece of jewelry settling over her anatomy with the cotton saree she was wrapped in, holding onto hope.

Kamalnayani let her mind play games again, pulled into a memory not too distant.