“The Milky Way lights death tonight...”

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Forgotten memories rattle into Abhiths’ brain with each bump of the donkey’s hooves clattering down the hillside;...Mother's milk....her singing praise to Annapurna for the harvest of golden fields...the play of childhoods laughter, all abandoned a handful of hours ago amongst the ruin of her sister’s wedding...shattered by screams...of abduction to the drumbeat of bullets. 

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‘...my grief speaks, we do not do God's will, but only the lusts of the fallen...’

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Eagle-Owl calls. Unnecessary was Abhiths’ betrothal at birth, for with Vivaan she was a companion tree, the one filling any lack in the other. He taught her to herd his fathers’ goats...to down a hare at 100 yards. She gave him words and numbers, a world, a screen school, that providing for aging parents would have robbed him.

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‘...together we played, together we ran, together we cry...yet here you whisper “Let me draw him out...alone”.’

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Starlight shadows. Vivaan twitching as the boulder pings with a bullet, brother to the one resting in his bowels, panting out cries that draw his family's khaki killer to Abhith’s salvation, measured by her knees bleeding as she crawls through the rocks.

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“Om Namo Narayanaya...om Namo Narayanaya”[1] [I bow before the Almighty]

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It was groomsmen who fell first to the mutineer soldiers; women, corralled cattle for later sale; Abhith grasped before Vivann in his donkey’s flight, across boulder fields she now crawls, towards their killer’s liver, inserting her blade that until then had only known the ritual of everyday, now, today, it baptizes her right hand red.

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“Jaan[2]...hamaaree bahanon ko bachao[3]...” [beloved...save our sisters...]

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Standing, shaking, watching, the fading light cry out in final surprise from the anguished eyes that would have happily despoiled her. She gathers the wandering donkey, shoulders a discarded carbine, weeps silently sharing Vivaans’ last breath.

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“Love rest...while I go to gather our family...hurt our haters...and find our unborn babes with you in the next life...”

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Hooves rattle a tattoo, down the bloody trail past the stifling khaki soldier clawing at the black cutout of Vivaans’ stony grave against the bright night sky.

 

[1] To Vishnu - I bow before the Almighty.

[2] Jaan - Term of endearment: life; loved one; darling