#kushagra

Uneasy Encounters

Day 3 of Desi LGBT Fest: Fear/Guilt

“This joy, this peace, this deep solace from your companionship, is my greatest fortune. My heart beats for you with a clumsy gangling stagger and it embarrasses me to share this with you, but you must know it, just as I must know the warmth of your fingers and the steadfast comfort of your lap. My cunning beloved, you have captured me, stolen me from my duties and orphaned me from this world. Your briefest glance is my skin exploding with warmth. Your shortest call is my soul rushing back Home. Your invitation is my hunger and your touch is my asthenia. 

I live, not as myself, for the first time. I live, knowing the face of my Beloved, for the first time. I live, for the first time.

You must know it. You must know it now. Because now that I live, I think of dying.

What will it mean, when I lose this? What will it mean, when my desires do not have you hiding inside them? What will it mean, when your hands turn cold and you stop knowing the gracelessness of my untaught heart? 

Will I loathe my freedom from your embrace? Will I lose my hunger and my fatigue? 

When the last of your flesh is pecked away by the World and you become It, you will turn into Sorrow and when you do, balm of my heart, you must kiss my cheeks so that they are wet and burning. So that I could recognise you as the World again. So I could finally stop being so afraid.”

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Akshar [the figure laying on Kushagra], is an immortal Sage. There are few secrets of the universe that he doesn’t know, yet he ponders Kushagra’s eventual demise and finds himself unsure of what will lay ahead. 

Kushagra himself is the ancient (but much younger) king of the Air Kingdom, which he rules with an iron fist and a steelier heart. Yet, he has seduced the Mechanical Sage himself and regained his youth through partial immortality - but he is on borrowed time.