Ramayana - The Immortal Saga

Their sacrifices shined in the evening's natural forest light, leaving an afterglow that revealed their long trail. They had gone far, far from their jewels and riches, into lands that spoke only of birds and beauty, oh, the arresting beauty.

 

"Together," they had promised each other once in the company of strange men, the music setting in stone a memory they wouldn't dare forget. And together they were, trying to conquer dark unknown worlds far more complicated than mere love. In wait for a change, they lived, loved, laughed. A sense of peace fulfilled them so much that everything seemed enough but was never quite. And surrounded by the canopies closing in on her heart, a beacon of hope glimmered through the lushness one eve, a strange enchantment blinding her into bright oblivion.

 

"Bring me that gold," she pointed at the animated glorious elusion. And like all the times that humanity created tragedy with greed, history was to repeat again. Gods were mere mortals on Earth, and mortals obeyed the same laws of death and life, and life that day was to turn tragic. And off he ran, more pleased with himself than ever, reveling in the power his bow, and of enchantment that wooing his love had instilled in him. Change, he thought, was here at last.

 

And change it was. Deep in the night, while he aimed for the gold, the shadows broke his sharp focus. He looked on, but his eyes failed him. The invisible atrocity had struck him, and his arrows, once praised for their accuracy, were now redundant. He tripped onto a branch and fell into darkness, and his body eased itself into a moment of weakness, a moment of giving up. In a flash, he was filled with light, and in the immense glow, a scream roared louder than all life, silencing life itself for a mournful instant. He was gone, dimmed into the sudden absence of light, into frail nothingness. She knew he was, for his voice she would recognize anywhere.

 

The pounding heart dragged with it fears greater than the rising shadows, and in the finality of the tragedy, the darkness revealed itself, shaking her soul and stirring her voice from melancholic incoherence into silence.

 

"Quiet, mortal," the Darkness spoke, mocking her childlike sorrow for a mere mortal. "From dust, he came, and to dust, he dissolved. It is I who lives forever, it is I who am immortal." And with the resounding echoes of his voice, he appeared in the most handsome of unparalleled, purer than any life in existence. His voice revealed arrogance enough to fit in ten heads together, no less, and his skin shone naturally.

 

"No, you only fool yourself," the lady retorted, for she was already half-dead— his screams still echoed loud in her soul. "I shall remain his," she added with a set jaw.

 

"You only fool yourself. He is not going to rise anymore. I remain permanent. I exist forevermore. I could make you immortal if only you are ready to belong to me."

 

"Your end is near, oh bearer of the ten heads! Your arrogance will cause your fall. True, you shall not die, but, mark this grieving woman's words, you shall succeed in achieving such a state where the dead shall pity you."

 

"'The dead shall pity me' — strange words you have for me, Sita, " he said, and with that, the ten heads laughed together. That monstrous, ugly laughter.

 

Yet, 20 years later, as she stood over his body with the stained arrow that killed him, she felt no relief. She had had her revenge, yet, somehow she was not complete.

 

He was still gone. His absence, still a hole that could never be filled. And there was nothing she could do to bring him back. Tears filled her eyes, dripped off her blood-tainted face. She looked behind at the battlefield, at all the lives she had ruined, all the families she had untethered.

 

And in reveries of her promise of togetherness, she took out her dagger with that keen newfound determination that yields immense joy.

 

"I am joining you, beloved," she declared to the Earth.