Saraswati Shah (cobratalk) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-07-14 15:59:00 |
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From dust and dirt to dirt and dust. As Saraswati casts one final look at the devastation that is IVI, she feels no sadness. She feels no longing for the classrooms that once were, nor any nostalgia for the friendships the year forged. She feels nothing except a keen sense of loss -- amongst the devastation, she's lost herself. But it is over, and Saraswati is going home. She does not say goodbye when she leaves. Her bags have been packed, ready to go, for days now; and when the time comes at last, she flies without a word. The Australian desert stretches in front of her, and then it is beneath, and then it is not there at all, invisible beneath a wide expanse of fluffy white clouds. --- 'How was it there?' her country representative asks to break the long silence, her Hindi tinged with a South Indian accent. 'What was it like?' But Saraswati has no interest in conversation, not with her, not with anyone. What more is there to say, after all? What is there even left to feel? --- "Saraswati!" The sound interrupts her slumber, although at first, Sara thinks it is simply a continuation of her dream. How many times has she heard that very same voice calling to her in the night? Too many to count. But there it is again -- "Saraswati!" -- and her eyes flutter open, and her senses are met with the thick smell of petrol and the dusty air that covers the dirt roads of Gujarat. The car door flies open, though she has not touched it, and suddenly she is buried -- in limbs, tangled limbs, wild and energetic, and hair, too, hair that smells of the very same coconut oil that she used to weave into her sisters' hairs so many years ago. "Saraswati!" Her cheek is wet, and she lifts a trembling finger and realises that she is crying -- but these are not the tears Saraswati cried all too often at IVI. These are tears of happiness, because she is home, and there is Jagrut, and Dilip, and Parvati and Priyanka, and she is home. What is there even left to feel? Her siblings' collective embrace tightens around her, and she sights her parents in the distance, amongst the dust and dirt that her tribe has come to call their home. What is there even left to feel? Saraswati sighs, her breath shaky, and realises that there is a lot. There is a great deal left to feel, because she is home, and she is loved, and she will never leave again. "I will never leave you, not again," she whispers into Parvati's hair, inhaling the coconut scent that smells of India and Gujarat and the Vedi and love. "Not ever. Not now." She won't. She has lost Shanti and her powers, but now, Saraswati has this. Above all else, she has this. And in the end, somehow, it will be enough. |