LOVE: To Infinity And Beyond

The Birth of His Destiny

The human psychology has always been a queer thing and it has always been a wonder how humans, with all the blood-lust that they nurture in their hearts, are any better than the carnivores that they hunt in the wild.

Such had been the mind of a supposed father, as well, who deemed his children as nothing more than weapons, atleast initially. So, it was only natural for the whole of the Hastinapura royal family as well as the maximum number of their acquaintances to have been invited to the exhibition of his latest weapons - to the birth of his vengeance.

****

"Duhshala! Where are you - Oops, sorry!", Uruvi muttered an apology as she bumped into Arjuna.

"Oh, Arjuna! Could you kindly tell me , where I might find Princess Duhshala?", Uruvi asked, knitting her brows in query, her voice almost pensive with the extra dash of false cheerfulness.

"I guess I am not her Assistant", Arjuna chuckled lightly, attempting to make the unmasked hint of unpleasantness in his cadence drown under the façade of an almost practical joke.

"Revered prince, is that how you talk about your only sister?", Uruvi mock-chided him, somehow catching her tongue before saying, "...to your betrothed?" instead. But that would've been a blow well below the belt, and both of them knew that as the silent glance of understanding passed between them.

If they could ever be anything to each other, naturally, that would be friends. Friends who actually understood each other.

"Alright. Jokes apart", Arjuna deftly side-stepped the gravity of the conversation that they were possibly headed towards and instead chose to remind her of something important.

"I'll send Duhshala to your chamber once she is ready, and once I myself find her out. Make sure you are ready by then, that is, as soon as possible, or else we will be late for our journey to Kampilya .", he informed and alerted her before hastily leaving to attend to some other task-in-hand.

Is it wrong for me to be justly proud of him - to be an admirer and well-wisher when I know that he's not the one?

Uruvi's thoughts were a confused mess for the umpteenth time. She probably needed a nudge in the right direction.

She stared for a while towards where he had left, graceful in every stride and as handsome as the darkness of a storm - somewhat transfixed - before shaking her head slightly, as if to summon her wits back, and leaving to let her handmaids adorn her in the shiniest of golds.

****

"Shikhandini! Where are Yaaj and Upyaaj Dev?", Drupad screamed the question, irritation and impatience as evident as the glint of a knife under the summer sun,"We're getting late for the yajna preparations! Gear up quickly. They'll be here in no time. I owe certain people the honour of letting them watch their destinies taking shape."

Before she could even frame a reply, Shikhandini heard the door of the weaponry shut loudly behind the retreating king.

Same old. She sighed. This absence of any sort of fatherly affection didn't even go particularly noticed by her anymore. It did, once, to a child or a teenager - but none of that mattered now.

Shikhandini returned to checking her weapons. It was a wonder how her mother kept up with all this. An ironic chuckle escaped her as she realised just how little the opinions or choices of women mattered - if not not at all.

****

On the way to Kampilya, Arjuna could feel a continuous restlessness - the brewing of a storm; as if some deep-buried story from the unknown past was trying to re-surface itself. He couldn't exactly pin-point what these weird feelings centred around, but there was this constant and gradual realization that his life was changing; for the better.