IV.

​

The days lengthened—not in time, but in texture.

 

Mornings began with the rooster’s complaints and the sharp scent of boiled guava leaves. Smoke rose from every roof like incense offered to no one in particular. A thin woman with three teeth sold fried lentil cakes wrapped in newspaper. I bought one each morning. She always gave me two.

 

The village unfolded itself to me, not all at once, but like a flower suspicious of too much light. Each day revealed a new detail—a shortcut through the tamarind grove, a boy who could mimic birdcalls so well he confused the real ones, a man who hadn’t spoken since his wife died but still hummed lullabies.

 

I began to rise with the roosters—not from habit, but eagerness.

 

There was always something to do.

 

When the temple priest fell ill, I offered to recite the daily verses. No one asked how I knew them. The villagers said I had a memory like an elephant and a voice like a story someone had almost forgotten. I took it as a compliment.

 

When the river swelled one night and crept close to the grain stores, I joined the men who lined the banks with stones and old cloth. My hands blistered. I didn’t mind. It felt good to be useful in ways that didn’t require divinity.

 

One afternoon, a small girl named Rani went missing. Panic spread like smoke. Her mother wailed into the well as if her voice could reach the bottom. I found Rani asleep beneath a fig tree, clutching a broken doll.

 

I carried her back. The doll fell once and cracked open. Inside was a kernel of rice and a dead bee.

 

No one could explain it. The priest declared it a good omen.

 

That night, her mother left a bowl of milk and hibiscus petals at my door. Meera added a slice of jaggery.

 

Meera.

 

She had changed—or maybe I had learned how to see her. There was strength beneath her quiet. When she laughed, it was never to please. She knew how to read clouds and cows and children. Once, she warned her father not to fire a certain batch of clay pots. “They’ve been listening wrong,” she said. He ignored her. The pots cracked.

 

She never said, “I told you so.” She only looked at him as if she had already forgiven him for what hadn’t yet happened.

 

We rarely spoke at length, but she sat beside me at the fire some evenings. Our arms would brush, and neither of us pulled away. Once, I handed her a carved mango pit I’d shaped during a long afternoon. She turned it over in her hand without a word, then slipped it into her sash.

 

There was a peace between us that didn’t ask for names.

 

The village began to treat me differently. Children brought me flowers stolen from other shrines. A man with a boil on his back asked if I could pray it away. An old woman asked me to name her grandson.

 

One evening, two brothers were arguing over where to place a fence—each claiming the land was theirs. I stepped in—not with force, but with silence. I asked them how long they expected the earth to remember their names

 

They laughed, then sighed, then walked away.

 

Afterward, an elder pulled me aside and said, “You could be something more.”

 

I didn’t know what he meant.

 

But I liked the way he said it.

 

That night, beneath the mosquito net, with the kiln’s warmth on one side and Meera’s footsteps fading on the other, I stared into the dark and tried to recall a time before the village.

 

Nothing came.

 

Only the soft clink of bangles.

 

Only the breath of the river.

 

Only the feeling of being where I was supposed to be.

​

​

V.

​

There was a night when the fire burned low, and no one stirred it.

 

The others had gone—the elders to their huts, the children carried off half-asleep, even the dogs curled into themselves like punctuation marks. Only the coals remained, glowing softly beneath a hush that had thickened like milk left too long in the pot.

 

Meera and I were the last by the fire.

 

She sat across from me, cross-legged, her arms looped around her knees. Her bangles rested quietly on her forearms. Her hair was unbraided, and a single strand clung to the curve of her neck.

 

Neither of us spoke.

 

The silence between us wasn’t empty. It had shape, weight. It pulsed gently, like something alive.

 

She picked up a stick and poked at the embers. Sparks rose, floated briefly, then died.

 

“I used to think fireflies were stars that forgot how to stay up,” she said.

 

I smiled. “And now?”

 

“Now I think stars are fireflies that remember.”

 

Her voice was soft, almost sleepy. She wasn’t trying to be poetic. She was just saying what came.

 

I watched her fingers, darkened at the tips with husk ash. Her nails were short, practical. She wore no ring. No thread around her neck. Just the moonlight on her skin and the scent of tamarind in her hair.

 

I reached for a twig and traced a circle in the dirt. She watched me.

 

“Sometimes,” she said, “you look like you’ve forgotten something important.”

 

“Do I?” I asked.

 

She nodded.

 

“But you also look like you’re not in a hurry to remember.”

 

That made me laugh—a quiet, startled sound that felt truer than anything I’d said all day.

 

The circle I was drawing broke. My hand stilled.

 

She reached over and smoothed the dirt with her palm. Slowly. Deliberately.

 

“I don’t mind,” she added. “Whatever it was.”

 

The embers hissed as the wind shifted.

 

And for a moment, I forgot that I had ever forgotten anything at all.

​

​

VI.

​

The festival of lights came early that year.

 

The rains had been generous. The rice grew tall and bowed at the waist, like people praying. The sun returned without malice—warm and golden, as if it too had been washed clean.

 

In the weeks leading up to the celebration, the village moved with a kind of music. Children strung marigolds into crooked garlands. Women painted their thresholds with rice paste and ash, drawing geometric blessings that looked like traps for gods. Even the potter—Meera’s father—set aside his limp and began firing new lamps with the care of a man making something that might last beyond him.

 

They asked me to lead the chant that would open the festival.

 

I said yes without thinking.

 

I no longer thought of myself as someone who had once said no.

 

When the night came, the whole village gathered in the temple courtyard. Clay lamps were lit one by one, until the walls seemed to glow from within. Smoke curled up from incense bowls. The air was thick with the smell of ghee, sandalwood, and fried sweets.

 

I stood beside the priest, reciting verses I hadn’t realized I still knew.

 

And then I saw her.

 

Meera stood among the women, holding a small lamp in both hands. Its flame flickered against her face, caught in her lashes, made her eyes burn gold. Her hair was half-loose, curled from the humidity. Her bangles caught the firelight with every breath.

 

She wasn’t looking at me.

 

But she knew I was looking at her.

 

After the prayers and sweets and dancing—after the children fell asleep in piles and the music faded into soft humming—she found me.

 

We sat behind her father’s house, near the embers of the cooking fire. A half-eaten sweet rested on a banana leaf between us. Smoke drifted through the banyan leaves above.

 

“I liked your singing,” she said.

 

I shrugged. “The tune is older than anything.”

 

She smiled. “That’s true of most things worth hearing.”

 

We sat like that for a long time—no rush, no reason to move. The fire cracked softly. Somewhere in the dark, someone was telling a story to a half-listening dog.

 

“Why did you stay?” she asked—not accusing, not even curious. Just tracing the shape of a thought.

 

I opened my mouth, but nothing came.

 

I could not remember arriving.

 

Only being.

 

“I suppose,” I said, “this is where I belong.”

 

She looked at me—not with surprise, but something quieter. Like recognition.

 

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe you always did.”

​​

​

Continue to Part 3

​

​

​