Winter arrived quietly in Pataliputra. The Ganges slowed into a still, silver ribbon, cloaked in morning mist. Trees along the temple walls stood bare, their branches stretched skyward like brittle arms in prayer. Smoke curled from clay chimneys, carrying with it the scent of sandalwood and lentils, the hush of simpler days.
Within the temple, Devika no longer danced. After the festival, she had retreated from the stage and from the sacred rituals. The priests did not question her. They had seen her dance that night. It had been a farewell — not just to the gods, but to the girl she once was.
She now spent her mornings sweeping the temple steps, barefoot in the chill. Her hands, once adorned with henna, were rough with labor. Her voice, once lifted in song, now spoke only when spoken to. The priests had allowed her to stay, not as a dancer but as a servant. Meera wept when they broke the news, but Devika had only nodded.
"I do not wish to perform," she said. "I only wish to remain."
In the afternoons, she wandered the gardens alone. Her favorite path circled the lotus pond where she and Aarav had once sat, where fireflies once danced with reckless joy. The ghungroos tied to the neem branch still swayed in the wind, though faded now, like memories left too long in the sun.
Some days, she wrote. On parchment scraps, on pressed leaves, even etched in the earth with a stick — fragments of thoughts, pieces of him.
He never saw the river in winter. He would've said it looked like his mother's mirror.
When I wake from dreams, I still expect to find him there — beneath the neem, lotus in hand.
I died, but I kept breathing.
Once a week, she would visit the hill just beyond the city gates, where the wind was strongest and the sky opened wide. It was the place where the rebels had last been seen. Where Aarav had ridden with sword drawn and heart blazing.
She brought him offerings: garlands, ripe mangoes, honeyed sweets. She would sit for hours, her hair unbound, speaking to the air.
"They say you died with honor," she told him. "But I would've rather had you live with disgrace. I would've taken your broken body over your perfect death."
The seasons turned.
Spring returned, timid and pale. Then summer, scorching and relentless.
Devika grew thinner, quieter. Meera begged her to eat more, to speak, to return to the platform. But Devika only smiled faintly.
"My dance was tied to a heartbeat that no longer exists," she whispered.
It was on the first night of the rainy season, as thunder rolled in the distance, that she woke with a start. Not from a nightmare — but from silence. A deep silence that hummed in her bones. Her feet ached as though she had danced in her dreams.
Drawn by something she could not name, she slipped from her chamber and walked barefoot through the temple corridors. The moon hung low, swollen with light, casting ghostly shadows on the marble floors.
She found herself at the lotus pond.
The neem tree swayed gently, its leaves whispering secrets. The tied ghungroos shimmered faintly in the moonlight.
She stood before them.
And then, slowly, she raised her arms.
No music guided her. No audience watched. Her feet moved instinctively — not for praise, not for gods, but for memory.
She danced.
Not with joy.
Not even with sorrow.
But with love.
The kind of love that did not ask for return. That did not fear time or distance. The kind that carved itself into the soul and stayed there — a scar, a promise.
She imagined him there beside her, under the tree, his eyes full of stars, his voice calling her name.
"Devika."
When she stopped, the wind had stilled. The pond reflected her as one — not fragmented. Whole.
She knelt, took the ghungroos from the branch, and placed them at the pond's edge.
"You are free now," she whispered. "And so am I."
That night, she returned to her chamber, wrote one final letter on a strip of parchment, and tucked it into the folds of her robe.
The next morning, she was gone.
No one saw her leave.
But Meera found the letter:
*To the one who made the stars brighter,
If I am born again, I will find you. In the rhythm of drums, in the scent of jasmine, in the hush between raindrops. I will find you, and I will dance for you again.*
Until then, let the gods carry me across the river of time.
Let them weave our fates once more.
— Devika
And so ended the first life.
Not in triumph. Not in defeat.
But in a promise carried by the wind.
Their story was not over.
It had only begun.
(End of Volume 1)