KRISHAVYAYAM

74. Atelier

"I wish you'd sing for me someday," he rumbled burying his face in her milk skin, the scent of camphor invading his lungs for she lilted an ancient call of a maiden whose eyes fell on an archer and he shot a target at her heart.

Ek chitwan mein jyoti aisi,
Mann aangan ho jagmag jagmag.

Moh ki maari ek kumaari ke pag hove dagmag dagmag.
Taar jiya ke chhed rahi hai,
preet ki athkheliyan.

"Oh it's a forgotten tune, quite humdrum," she hummed closing her eyes, stroking the squirm of a life in her and a low gasp then alerted her husband. Kanha raised his head from her shoulder and found her giggling then. Hridayaa's eyes shimmered as she clamped her mouth with a palm and shifted to prop herself up against a velvet plexured cushion.

"The baby kicked!"

Chestnut eyes glazed with a novel sheen of affection again. 'I couldn't feel them the last time.' A father reminisced in misery as an emperor had walked with a chin up, lamenting for a pregnant wife who was left to the mercy of a vadon once again and in solitude.

He scoured for more validation as a family man now, and his beloved was acquainted with the silent gesticulations that conveyed the same. Shri did not ask and Hari did not say it. He showed instead. She was ne'er vexed but it had plummeted her self-esteem then. The deference and agape love did not change an iota though.

At twenty weeks she was impatient.

"I almost cannot wait to have you in my arms, little one," he had heard her talk to their baby when alone. He'd caress her womb when she'd be sound asleep. "I have ached to kiss his baby since forever. Come and Maa has plenty of fables for you to know, plenty of love for you to be doused in. Your father brings me roses as if we are lovers still!"

Indeed lovers still,
For their trysts were now infamous.

She was bewitching. The woman before whom demons swooned and caelitis were rendered wordless. Dark as the zenith hour of dusk and as radiant as a nymph who rose from the cerulean waves, she had her wife in a daze for she had poof-ed out of the blue (god).

Kamalnayani looked half amused, half moonstruck as Mohini grinned at her, winking notoriously. She sported a red and black lehenga of chiffon, diamantes stuck to the flowy fringes as well as her kohl-lined eyes and she swung a vial of mead in her willowy fingers— all too coquettishly.

Why, you ask?

"Because I last saw her so long ago," Hridayaa accentuated, sheepishly batting her eyes at Kanha and linking an arm of his to hers. The latter had mirth dancing in his very handsome features and it wouldn't be wrong to say he missed those precious moments either.

Ogres raced hither and thither for one touch of Mohini who swaggered through the waves, effortlessly charming all. Flowy tresses wrapped in the whiff of lotus and pearl ornaments dangled on her voluptuous form. She was beautiful and lethal. Woman and vulpine.

"And I miss her."

He snorted out a laugh, tendrils jumping up to his forehead to kiss them and then he obstructed them with a rake of his sculpted fingers, "I am literally right here, Hridayae."

"No, Mohini." She whined, almost hopping in her place but he disciplined her with quasi glare. Krishu pouted, seeming more of a child than a mother— as if demanding not a woman but a candy. "I want Mohini! She can give me excellent company these days and you know we're nearing the due date. Also she had a kid so she can give me great parenting tips meant for mothers. Kanha pleaseeeeee?"