#xeu

Bhairi approached slowly. The infant was sleeping, her fingers curled into themselves. She looked around. People no longer visited her temple. Sometimes she would hear the far-off prayers of people passing by, those who saw the tip of her temple, the shikaram, from the highway. Mostly though, they thought her temple and everything around it was haunted, cursed.

That was if they knew of her at all. Whoever had come had cleaned her temple, and left an infant behind. Was it an offering? A sacrifice? She picked up the child. It had been so long since she had held a child. Gods did not have children often, and when they did, the children grew up too quickly and became gods in their own right, eager to exert their power and forget the few days when they had been small and weak.

The girl squirmed around until she was settled and warm into Bhairi's arms. She was a lovely thing, with long fluttering lashes and skin the color of rain-soaked soil. The temple was no place for a child to grow up. But then again, the human world was not ideal either. Especially not for an unwanted girl child.

Bhairi's long hair fell onto the child's face, and the child sneezed. Bhairi examined her hair, knotted like banyan roots over the years. The dark violet of her cotton saree, still stained with blood. She had spent too many years alone, too many years unattended and aloof. What had become of the other gods? Their statues remained on the earth, but the gods themselves had disappeared.

She pulled her hair back, and the black tangles smoothed out into a single plait. She adorned herself in silk and gold, with vermilion on her forehead and kohl lining her eyes. Her glory was something she had forgotten to maintain.

The girl, though, knew no difference. She slept without worry in Bhairi's arms. The goddess knew she could not toss the girl away. She had been abandoned once already.

"Varsha," she whispered into the girl's ear, tracing the name onto the girl's forehead with her finger.

The child grew in the temple grounds. Bhairi made it rain so Varsha could bathe in the temple's pond. She brought life back into the temple. The girl was saying her first words when Bhairi heard the prayer.

A child. Anything for a child.

Varsha sat on the steps of the temple, her hair tied up with ribbons. A couple of butterflies were around her hands, and Varsha turned around.

"Amma!" she yelled, showing Bhairi the pretty creatures. Bhairi's attention was elsewhere. It was in the car that was going away, carrying a woman with a universe of love and no one to give it to.

Bhairi snapped her fingers, and the car's tire burst. It was a warm afternoon, and her temple's shikaram was visible for miles. As she thought, the woman walked in. Bhairi walked back to her inner sanctum. She sat on the stone slab and settled. Her flesh turned to stone again, for the first time in a year.

They came in, the woman and her husband. Bhairi knew they were good people. They took off their shoes in front of the main entrance and walked in, the woman covering her hair with a scarf. The man rang the long-silent temple bells as the woman mumbled her prayers.

Varsha was hiding behind her. Bhairi swallowed her tears. She was a goddess, she was meant to answer prayers. There should've been no sorrow, no tears threatening to fall onto her stony face.

"Go," she whispered.

"Amma?" Varsha asked.

The woman heard her, and Varsha peeked out from behind Bhairi, in the inner sanctum. Bhairi heard the woman gasp. Varsha walked forward gingerly, and the woman wrapped her arms around her. The woman was afraid still, that the beautiful child in her arms belonged to someone else, that the little girl was only lost.

Bhairi saw the woman carry her Varsha away, and when the temple doors closed and sun had set, she let herself fall and she let herself weep.

***

Bhairi did not move when the temple doors opened, nor when the young women and men poured in. She received more devotees nowadays, after the news of her granted wish and miracle child spread. A priest came in the mornings and cleaned the temple, decorating her sanctum with flowers and incense. He was sleeping on one of the steps now, made drowsy by the afternoon heat.

The group prayed to her, and she listened to their wishes and granted what she could. The girl in front of the group did not fold her hands in prayer or ring the temple bells.

The girl with long lashes and her hair tied with ribbons stepped into the inner sanctum.