disclaimer : there's a lot of
✨gay panic✨ in here.
The setting was an atelier of a grotesque art in making— born of power lust and rapacity.
It haunted a certain carrier of bliss who was inebriated on a swarthy man of beguiling features and silver-tongue.
She spun in the music of the infinity for she was an artist and nursed a pearl of kalopsia. He was the art and she was his muse too.
The frothing wan waters of Sindhu cascaded down the barricades of Sauvira, taking away with its might weensy pebbles and vibrant sea life. The state in its heydays now seemed to dissolve into an uncalled oblivion, as the river fell into a cauldron fashioned of mirage— disappearing into voids.
Soon enough, the sultry month of Aashadha embraced the vicinities of the eastern coasts with vigor as the queens of the city of liberation and that of the entire cosmos predicated shrieks that cantillated for absolution.
The cuckooing vociferousness of Gati sent a quiver down the spines of the seers.
Kaashyapi thumped and grumbled, as rocks and soil rubbed and shook against her abode. As draughts transmogrified into violent gales eradicating roots and saplings and wretched bliss off the jana-maanas, the all-mother stood motionless and awaited for the pot of karma to brim with each passing jiff for it was Niyati she could not intervene in.
Withal, her forbearance still stifled the tremors of havïtys as auburn flames erupted on her.
The sooty ashes were dappled into puffs of clouds on the canvas.
The heavens were in dispute, appearing to crash down albeit they didn't. The goddess clad in gray wept tears as a chagrin skirted the natal dwelling of the crimson-foreheaded fortune.
The elements came together to succour life. The chakras formed a human, the doshas and gunas did too. The planets moved in a sync and the universe followed its own music.
She had come in not one but four major forms. All codependent yet whole in their own right.
The cosmic order blossomed in the scarlet palm of her who was showered with the benediction to never age— the Gati, Niyati and Sanghatana. And yet it was utterly foreign to her at the moment.
"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?"
"As my queen pleases."
And so, Mohini and Mohini were now face to face after ages— giggling vivaciously and maniacally at each other's sight.
"So where should I escort you now, wife?"
"Jhumka shopping!" Krishu tugged her, then waddling around to the brass and copper caskets to arrange for casual robes for herself. Mohini hummed and slipped herself in the quilts of the soigne bed, then spat her beverage right through her mauve lips out of pure whammy when the whims of Kamalnayani surprised her again.
"And we're hitched. We are begetting a kid through the blessing of an austere sage. I don't want anyone ogling at you in the marketplace, hmm? They don't have any right to."
She shortly inclined her head in a yes, inarticulate. Of course, they were married.
"Right. Only you do." The goddess simpered through the chalice sitting on her mouth. Then she clipped her bracelet against her dainty wrists, kissing where the pulse chanted the name of an archeress.
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
"This for Bhadra Jiji, this for Lakshu Jiji and oh— Jambavati Jiji adores teals and turquoise!"
Oxidized silver bracelets, bronze armbands, floral rings and arabesque silks brimmed the tawny stalls on wheels as the two goddesses stirred past them, riveted by the grandeur of the city that was their latibule. Krisha and Mohini walked hand in hand, occasionally picking a bloom or two to profess their love in dramatic whispers as their secretive chortles became the fantasies of little girls who watched them from afar.
The ivory and maroon turban with pearl motifs caught her attention and then she waved her hand at her husband- urhm, wife.
Kamalnayani smiled at the lady vendor who beamed at her with gentle eyes. "What do you expect?"
"A healthy baby. Nothing more." She shrugged cordially, looking over her shoulder to find Mohini partially veiling herself as she peered at the bustling streets through the rich translucence of her raiments.
"She seems new here. Do you know her?" The genial old woman squinted, "Why would she do that? Does she not know it's not normal to mantle her face in Aryan practices?"
"She's new here, Kaaki," Hridayaa answered in a jiffy as Mohini sprang to catch up with her, flashing the gleam of her cloaked dagger to the bandits who gawked at her. The bunch inhaled sharply, going about their own businesses when they recognised her as a beguiling mirage. An elusive dream.
Women with lethal beauty were to be feared. It was doltish to trust her who had other eyes trailing on every gait she took.
"Mohini. She's enchanting and gravitates a lot of attention to herself she doesn't wish for."
"Oh. Your friend?"
"This is my wife, aunt." Mohini giggled instead as the seller flushed, then ducked her head while murmuring a small apology. "No worries."
"Exquisite couple, best wishes to both of you." She fished out a leaf of tamarind from her purse, then slid the velvet turban from the honey-eyed woman to the one whose smile was as sweet as it. Kanha— now Mohini, brought a pair of suryakanthi jhumkas and slipped in Hridayaa's lotus palms.
"Pretty moms make pretty babies."
Kaaki Sulochanaa— with eyes as pulchritudinous as her name— chuckled once again at the flushed women who squirmed a little closer to each other, surreptitiously stealing gazes and then shuffling in opposite ways, the presents never seeming enough.
"Oh, so you both aren't yet out of the mushy-mushy phase?"
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
The dusk and the moon and their realm in Dvaravati wasn't exotic to their ardor for each other. It was the atelier of the art they painted each other in.
The scarlet roses and ivory jasmines embraced each other in the curls of the enchantress who sat between the legs of her wife, inclining her swan neck to the side as her eyes shut themselves when ivory fingertips skimmed through her scalps and skin. The sleek obsidian waterfalls and warm breaths of the woman of flames fondled her nape and Mohini wanted to flee into the aisles to escape from her namesake, but she knew the sacred smokes and ambrosia would chase her still. For the woman who carried their child was said to have seized the sense of a thousand men too around her.
"You are seducing me, good lady Kamya?" She crooned, her voice as soothing as the psithurism of the forest they promised to be each other's.
"Keep dreaming. I have always wanted to do your shringara," Agneyaa murmured lying through her teeth and when she felt a frisson run down below her touch she smirked. "Hesitate for nothing though, darling. I am quite a charmer I am told."
Mohini let out a shuddered breath, rolling her eyes and then she caught the hand of Mohini who was yet sniggering at her. "Enough now. Your skills are laudable. I have never looked this beautiful." Her gaze traversed to the mirror which gaped at two women like long lost lovers. The stones of lapis lazuli and rubies and diamonds were bestrewed upon her lithe physique like stars on the ether. A spark birthed in her guts and she was an art. An art to be ravished by her lover.
Kamalnayani giggled and pressed a chaste kiss to the cheeks of that beauty who turned pink. Then she filled the dips of the curves of Mohini's spine with her fingers binding the kamarbandh, husking near her earlobes, "Lies."
She stifled the throes of her heart and an amaranthine smile stayed on her visage. As they multiplied and she was unwavered, she was the epitome of every mother. Mohini whisked around and pulled her in a slow dance, unhurried and buoyant as their limbs swayed in poised waves— grinning as they found forelsket again and again.
Afterall, nightmares were dreams too. The heart of Keshava was living a vision of a lover for now.
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
Kanha found blue roses, azure water lilies and peacock feathers all tied together by a string as a gauzy navy robe enveloped them. "They reminded me of you, love." The whimsical note read, stuck to the spruce wood table and he grinned plucking them from it.
"And oh, I loved being with Mohini."
He was a fuchsia yet again.
The setting was an atelier of a picturesque art in making— born of the love of an archeress and the chakradhaari.
UNEDITED.
Homosexuality has never been a taboo in ancient india. I should probably post a warning about this in the beginning of the book soonish.
Do let me know how you liked the update. I'll see you with the next one, bye! <3
(yes, i have a doubious sleep schedule. i am a good person tho, pinky promise ◕ᴗ◕✿)