JAI MAA !

              THERE WAS A TIME, when those words were the last thing we would ever have wanted to hear one of her own people say, but where had that hopeful ideaology gotten them? Here, to a makeshift settlement, ripped from their homeland, their loved ones, their beloved cities & temples & homes. War stood on their doorstep, a great hulking beast that Ravana himself might have been proud of.

White pennants rippled in the artificial breeze, rustling her skirts as she stood slowly. Every fibre of her protested against the movement, screamed at her, that this was wrong. Send her home Apsara, she is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister. How can you arm someone so young & send them to spill blood or have theirs spilled? But her army needs every able bodied person available if they have any hope of winning back what is theirs. She could make an exception today & turn Rohini away, but how can she justify sparing one person & not others?  & what of the girl? She would be safe no doubt, but forced to live with the thought that others had died for their cause while she had been forced to remain here on varanasi. She couldn’t put such an astronomical weight on her either.

                 Apsara stretched a hand behind her, reaching for the sword kept behind her makeshift throne at all times.The hilt glinted in the sun, an elaborate gold lion standing rampant & proud. Slowly, the offered the sword out with both hands, as if it was a blessing & not the curse she believed it to be.

Rohini’s own hands were clasped in greeting as well as she repeated it. Partly because it was respectful and the right thing to do and partly because she secretly amused herself with little things like this on quiet days such as these. Another dip of the head and the ever familiar query: “How can I help you lovely ladies today?”

A smile made of sunshine and dark eyes glittering like the stars she was named for to match. 

“There’s a chart hanging right over there with our wares and some of the prices. But it if it’s something in particular you’re looking for, you’re in luck: you get to taste the sweets you’ve got your eye on. The same also goes for your companion with the most beautiful sword I’ve ever seen in the twenty-one years I’ve been alive and kicking.”

                   APSARA TURNED, LOWERING HER GLASSES & shooting her captain a wink as if to say, & you thought my clever disguise wouldn’t work. ❝ Such hospitality, I can see why this shop is so highly praise.  ❞  Grinning now, she approached the counter, hands clasped on top of it before shooting the displays a quick glance.  

❝  you have good taste kanna, that sword is over 70 years old. They say that when it came time for it’s maker to part with it she wept, for she knew the moment she laid eyes on it that she would never again be able to recreate such beauty. The woman who paid for it forcibly prised it from her hands & left her for dead.  ❞ 

     something far greater than a wrench was thrown into her plans. in that moment, the rani wanted to scorn, to swear at this woman who did not understand that, when pursuing scientific progress, no one’s “livelihood’ mattered. sadly, she had to be on the queen’s good side, if she wanted her research to continue in any form. instead of showing contempt, the rani opted to appear cocky, almost as if everything she’d been working towards wasn’t close to being swept from under her feet.

   ❛ sadly, i can’t justify the resources and manpower required to move my laboratories from the city. ❜ more so because it was utter nonsense, and a complete waste of time in the name of safety. ❛ i wouldn’t want to put such a strain on your highness     - and i can assure you, my experiments are under my complete and total control. the instability of material e256 will be carefully monitored. at risk is no one but myself. ❜ well, her unwilling lab assistants, but the woman didn’t need to know about them.