#sivvu

@luminouscassian wanted Devasena, green!

If Mahendra is unquestionably her son, Sivvu is her father’s daughter. In all ways, really: from her carelessness over her clothes, from her decided preference fo the color green, from her uncanny silent focus. Devasena would find it a great deal more unsettling did she not love her Baahubali so; and besides, with old age she finds that sobriety not so dreadful after all. 

(”I knew it!” Mahendra announces, throwing himself upon the floor petulantly. “She’s your favorite.”

The last time she sees her father alive, she is angry with him. Devasena hardly remembers why. It might have been some childish complaint: that he had told her to study her letters than join him on the hunt, that he had upheld her nurse’s decree that a princess ought to wear fine silks rather than more comfortable garments. Either way, it had been foolish, and selfish, and—

When he bent down to kiss her goodbye, she’d turned her head away out of pique. He made no complaint: Father never had, about anything. Jayasena does not know, no more than her nurse, but nonetheless it lingers in her memory, a secret shame.

*

Her first kiss, Devasena decides, ought to be a matter of great import. Such is only fitting for a daughter of Kuntala, land that fosters romantic fancies alongside, paradoxically, a culture built on pragmatism and plainspokeness. It must be, she dreams, at midnight, rimmed by moonlight, the climax to a challenge given and returned.

It must be utterly perfect--except perfection is an intimidating goal to expect, for a girl of not-quite-fifteen.

Devasena loses her nerve five months in and casually kisses a friend employed at the stables one afternoon. Better, she tells herself, to get it over with than to wait for a day that will never come, and so she reliquinshes her fantasies with only the slightest pang.

*

There is a trader who sails down the river once, boat laden with stores just as her lips as laden with stories of her travels. They are wonderful things: lands faraway where miracles occur, peoples of every shade and shape imaginable. “I don’t believe you,” Devasena declares when hearing of a land where a single wall stretches on for yojanas. “Such a marvel could never exist!”

“Then see it for yourself, Crown Princess,” says the trader, eyes dark, and Devasena looks up, startled. The invitation is clear; it would take so little to answer it, and Devasena can’t deny that a part of her longs to say yes, but--

“Kuntala needs me,” she says, a reluctant apology, and the trader nods in silent acceptance.

*

She wants suddenly, desperately to kiss her stranger. Not merely because he’s proven that he’s perfectly capable of facing the threat of a charging bull--had she not guessed as much days previous?--but everything within her sings with the assurance that what she feels is like nothing before.

Devasena is not so lost to shame or sense to forget that a battlefield is hardly the place to indulge such impulses. Later, she promises herself; there will be time to see to such things later.

*

Later she wishes that she had thought to ask for more than a kiss farewell on the forehead.

Unthinkable to ask that Baahubali not leave her, of course, not when Kattappa’s life was at risk; but it would have been something to have the memory of one last kiss to last her throughout the long years following.

Her mother teaches her to shoot, or at least tries to. Sivvu’s grip on her arrow is all wrong--too accustomed to holding a pen than any other weapon--and she can’t help but hold her elbow at an awkward angle. “Gopala save us,” Mother pronounces at last, and switches to instructions of the sword. To everyone’s relief, not least Sivvu’s own, she proves far more talented at this.

*

Mahendra has no sense, Sivvu learns that soon enough, and she’s not half his age when she reasons out that following him up the latest challenge he wants to climb is foolishness. Nevertheless he knows the palace better than she does, having years of advantage to learn it first, and when he points out the passages and paths to avail herself of and avoid, she always listens.

*

 Armies trembled before Grandfather once, but these days, at Father’s command, he spends most of his days tending his grandchildren. Perhaps this might work more efficiently, had Grandfather anything more than instincts to guide him, but no, instead his ideas of childcare usually involve long convoluted stories that are as dull, Sivvu privately thinks, as Father always teases. At least he knows how to cook--and Sivvu, reasoning that at least she and her brother ought to know their way around the kitchens, always begs him to share what he knows.

*  

She is too quiet, Uncle decides, and sets about teaching her to project her voice. He chooses the halls of the palace where echoes travel the furthest, to encourage her, and by the end, Sivvu can make herself heard at thirty paces should she want to.

She doesn’t, not often. The palace is loud enough as it is, and besides, forcing a crowd to silence if they want to hear what she whispers is one of her favorite tricks, but--it has its uses.

(Startling Mahendra into silence, for instance.)

* 

“What would you have me learn?” Sivvu asks her father one evening. There is no one more admired in all the world as Father, except maybe Mother, and if she can only be half as accomplished as he, then wouldn’t that be something to be proud of!

Archetype*

She thinks it ought to be lonely, being Queen; but thanks to her brother’s family and her own true love, she finds nothing of the sort.

Blessing

“The gods’ own blessing on our family,” Grandmother is fond of saying affectionately about Sivvu, while Mahendra grumbles: “Then what am I?”

Crack

Avantika’s mask falls from her face and is about to tumble into the river, when a hand catches it in mid-air; “Trust me,” a girl says, handing it to her: “You’ll thank me for this when you meet my brother.”

Fair

None in Mahishmati suspect that their beloved Crown Princess has been smuggling herself into the traders’ annual fair and festivities since childhood.

Hide

“It’s easy,” Mahendra tells her; “if you can only convince yourself that you belong somewhere, no one will give you a second glance.”

Mirror(verse)

In a colder universe, they speak of the Tyrant Queen, worse by far than even her sire, and the grandmother who preceded him; they speak of her iron grasp on Mahishmati and Kuntala and every country across which she could extend her borders.

Possession

On her fourth day as Queen, Sivvu fixes a courtier with a glare of such ferocity that he wonders aloud if her grandmother’s spirit possess her.

Pun/Wordplay

Sivvu soon finds that politics in the Mahishmati her father creates seems to be one part actual cleverness to three parts awful jokes.

Vision

For all Sivvu scoffs at her mother’s warnings not to read by lamplight, in later life, she nonetheless finds herself the first member of their family cursed with myopia.

Zodiac/Nakshatra**

@ratnananda had many great suggestions for this meme, and this is: The Nidhana-verse, if Devasena bore twins instead of only Mahendra.

1. “Twins?” says Baahubali blankly, yet again, and Devasena replies, as though she hadn’t stared at the midwife in a similar state of shock when told: “So it is called when there are two of them, you know.”

She has the boy--Mahendra, she has decided--and Kattappa the girl; beaming, Kattappa moves forward to hand Baahubali his daughter. Baahubali looks down, enraptured, and Devasena decides to wait until later to ask what her name shall be. It is not, she thinks ruefully, as she doesn’t have a good idea of what it shall be.

2. Baahubali builds another room to their cottage. It wasn’t as though they had not discussed it before, but somehow they had expected they would have longer to do it. But a cottage that might have been cozy for three people, is crowded for four: they have little choice in the matter.

Devasena isn’t as much help as she would like to be. The twins seem to have come to a secret agreement that one of them should be awake while the other sleeps, and that one should wake promptly dozes off at last. It might be exasperating, were it not for what Baahubali whispers when he discovers this: “They’re watching over us, don’t you see? Doing their duty in shifts, as any soldiers would.”

3. Sivvu sits with Gopu when he and Mahendra are fighting, which is far more often than any of them would like. “I don’t know,” Gopu tells her, swinging his legs over the edge of the canyon, “how you put up with him.”

“Neither do I,” Sivvu admits. “But he’s my brother.”

There is a shout nearby, and they see Mahendra’s vague outline clinging from the top of Father’s machinery.  

“Oh, no,” says Gopu weakly--to thin air, because Sivvu has already darted forward to save her brother.

4. Mahendra and Sivvu are not separated by their parents for their lessons, nor do they ever feel one is favored over the other. Sivvu might be more diligent at studying, but Mahendra has a more practiced hand with the goats; Mahendra is a better shot by sure, but Sivvu is better at hand-to-hand.

(She fights dirty. Baahubali couldn’t be more proud.)

In the evenings, Baahubali watches his children roughhouse together, relieved that they have each other as he had Bhalla--once.

5. The Queen Mother’s proclamation that there are multiple heirs carries rather less weight when there are three different claimants: Mahendra can’t help but be relieved that the curious eyes watch him and Sivvu equally, rather than focusing on him alone.

When they go to sleep that night in their shared bedroom, Sivvu rolls over to face him.

“If it gets very bad,” she says, “and we must go stay with Grandmother, it wouldn’t be so very bad, would it?”

Mahendra thinks about this. “At least we’d be together,” he decides at last. “Or--if we must, one of us could stay with her, and one look after Mother and Father?”