[ Fᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇᴅ ᴏɴ @WᴀᴛᴛᴘᴀᴅAsɪᴀɴFᴀɴᴛᴀsʏ, @Fᴀɴᴛᴀsʏ, @Aᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴀɴᴅ @ᴍʏᴛʜᴀɴᴅʟᴇɢᴇɴᴅ ]
Wᴀᴛᴛᴘᴀᴅ Iɴᴅɪᴀ Aᴡᴀʀᴅs 2021 Wɪɴɴᴇʀ (Tʜᴀᴛ Sᴇᴄʀᴇᴛ Qᴜᴇsᴛ)
ONC 2021 Lᴏɴɢʟɪsᴛᴇʀ
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As mysterious flash-floods rising from a dam reservoir begin drowning the town of K...
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Thirteen years ago.
Her mother's glass bangles jingled on her wrists like little bells as she pounded the black pepper in the stone mortar with a pestle.
The cool twilight breeze helped the earthy scent of the spice intermingle with the wisps of the burning camphor kept before the Mirror Mother's shrine.
A five-year-old Daminey watched the flaming camphor tablets kept in a brass lamp melt into white fumes and float away. She hugged the doll her father had made for her elder sister Dhwani and waited for her mother to finish powdering the pepper. She huffed and sank deeper into the woollen blanket her parents had draped around her torso to keep her warm during the rains. Outside, she could hear the clattering of her grandfather's wooden chess pieces, the ringing of her sister's anklets as she ran around pretending to be a mage and the mewling of their pregnant housecat.
The bells on her mother's anklets added to the sounds as she walked towards her and sat down. She placed a small bowl beside her, crossed her legs and drew her child onto her lap. Daminey made a face when her mother dipped a washed index finger into the amber honey-pepper concoction into the bowl and coughed. Her mother mimicked her face and fed the giggling child the mixture. It burned her swollen tongue, soft palate and her sore throat but it did the trick. She felt so much better than before.
When her mother leaned away, she peeked underneath the folds of her woollen blanket and frowned. The streaks of black that had grown from her birthmarks had not magically disappeared but had grown bigger over the days. They coiled around her forearm and legs like giant pythons looking for a chance to gobble her whole. Even their housecat, a pretty white queen with green eyes and huge black spots, was jealous of Daminey's stripes. The stripes had made her teeth and chest hurt, her nose runny and her throat itchy over two days.
In the verandah of their modest earthen home, her sister Dhwani's paintbrushes stirred the paints within their clay pots, brewing the perfect hue to match the tattoos of the Heron mage. She'd decorate herself in grey and blue, save dolls from evil demons and pretend that hers were the fists of justice. Daminey hadn't been saved from evil in the two days of her lonely quarantine and she wasn't liking it any longer.
Her marks scared her. She rubbed a finger across them and sighed. The little girl wondered if it was a symptom of what her father called the Kushta roga in Mirrortongue, leprosy. She had seen such people in the capital city, wrapped in blankets very much like hers, limping across busy marketplaces and begging for alms with rusted iron bowls. Some of them even grew huge, wriggling white maggots on their legs to feed the stray crows. She gagged when the picture returned to her mind and wiped the tears before they flowed from her eyes. She didn't want to live such a dreadful life; there was no known cure for leprosy according to her father, not yet.
