In a dark and forgotten room in her home, she is pressing herself into a corner, desperate for something to cling to. Although there are two walls firmly behind her, there is still a vast space before her within the vicinity of the room to needle her mind, to taunt her.
Tears leak from her red-rimmed eyes, and she turns her head to the side. It thumps against the wall and she crumples, sinking to the deeply carpeted floor with choking, wracking sobs as her mouth opens in a mind-manacled silence.
She herself will not cry aloud. She will die inside, but that in itself will not take her closer to her beloved. She is hiding herself in her shoulder, beneath her thick dark hair and drawing in silent breaths of anguish as she presses herself further into the wall. It is her deepest wish to become one with it, for a wall stands for many years and becomes stained with the marks of age.
She is choosing not to live, not to go on, not to step into the empty darkness of the open room. She is choosing not to live.
Parvati will no longer be inflicted with the wounds of life, decides Padma, and neither shall I.
In reality, Padma cannot see that the room is full of light, and it is just like any other day to everyone else. The light streams in through the high windows, streaking merrily across low-seated furniture and colourfully embroidered cushions.
Nevertheless, Padma does not see the light, and instead hides herself in her corner. There should be no light, she has convinced herself. And there will be no light, no light without Parvati.
Every breath is forced out between dry lips. Every rise and fall of her chest is filled with pain, and yet her soul does not part from her body. Not a word escapes her as angry eyes do all the talking and command silence in the room.
People bustle around the room as usual, taking no notice of Padma. They are worried for her, yes, but they hide their pain in a locked vault inside themselves along with another pain, less fresh but still sore to the touch. They choose to ignore the situation, because it is easier.
Padma despises them. She is angry, and angry tears fall onto her hollow, grey-tinged cheeks. She has not slept, has not spoken a word for a week. Hunger eats away at her insides, but not a morsel of food passes between her gritted teeth. It is a personal battle she will not lose.
They whisper in the corners of the room that she cannot see, so she swivels in her chair to glare at them contemptuously. She cannot see, cannot comprehend how they can go on living when they clearly have no control over what happens.
But Padma has all the control. Or at least she thinks she does.
Her eyelids flutter closed and she braces herself as another rolling wave of fresh guilt washes over her mind, and she suppresses yet another thought of her sister.
She wants to forget. Oh, how glorious it would be to forget and pretend, just as they do, that nothing had ever happened. But what Padma has deluded herself into thinking is that they go along forgetting her sister, while in sharp contrast, they still mourn her. They still hurt, but in Padma’s mind, to hurt is not enough.
The lamp flickers in the corner and her eyes are drawn to it, her long, fragile eyelashes quivering as they observe the erratic behaviour. Her liquid brown eyes search the lamp blindly as she searches within herself for reason. She stares at the shade, shadowed in some places, illuminated in others, and feels like weeping. It is senseless. It has no reason, but the light, just the very comforting glow of the light makes her wants to weep. But still, she doesn’t.
Her eyes are the only part of her that are moist. Her skin is parched, screaming noiselessly for hydration in the thick stifling heat of the room. Her hair hangs in lank greasy coils around her, unbraided. All fineries and hygiene are set aside because she is sacrificing them to win her fight.
Padma will win Parvati’s soul back. It’s not where it’s supposed to be, she is chanting inside her mind childishly. It’s not near me; it’s not where it’s supposed to be.
Her head pounds and pain sears across her forehead. She fits in her chair until someone from the room runs with a scream to help her, to pull her back, away from her sister.
The woman’s hands touch her cheeks and cradle her head to her breast, but Padma resists her with stony silence and wills with every fibre of her body for this woman to leave her alone.
She stares at her mother with spiteful eyes, hateful eyes. The day Pavarti died, the day they had taken her sister, was the day Padma had lost all rationality, for what in life made sense without her sister?
The cacophony of endless sound and pain fills her head, throbbing, probing, and demanding. It digs deeper, maliciously pulsing inside her head. It is cruel, unnerving, and just when Padma feels as though she is going to burst, she screams in vain to the walls of her darkened room. She screams in anger, in anguish. She hurts. She shatters, shrieking uncontrollably as she breaks her vow of silence and the pain floods into her mind.
Her wild cries of pain fill the house and those inside turn in wonder at the unearthly sounds she is making because finally, she is feeling it. She is no longer numbed to the pain.
Then, all is calm. All is silent, painless. The only sounds are her erratic breathing and the deafening silence, and it pushes against her ears, forcing her back down onto the bed in exhaustion.
Through delirious eyes and a beneath a sweaty brow, she sees him. Her eyes snake up the coil of rope, noting the angle in which it is held in his hand as she quickly scans up his body, hungry for the sight that will meet her above his neck.
His face stares back at her, and she immediately stiffens in her bed. It can’t be true, it can’t possibly be real and true and entirely fathomable, but still, He is here, and He will help her. Yama stands proudly, swathed in cloth that seems to excrete power as he gives off the faint ambiguous scent of curry and lemon grass. The smells in the room suddenly contrast and Padma shrinks under Yama’s curious gaze.
‘Why have you brought me here, Padma?’ The question is simple, so very simple, and Padma shakes in her bed as she fights to muster the strength to answer him.
The screaming has exhausted her lungs. After so long without speaking, her vocal cords are spent. Her voice comes out in a rasp, and the candles flicker ominously as she speaks.
‘I want Parvati.’
He chuckles deeply in his throat, and Padma can see the ornate jewellery jingling and dancing over his bare chest as he finds amusement in her stark answer. His very face seems to be filled with an ironic joy; after all, he is the God of Death and knows very well what he has done to her sister. Parvati will not have known him, but he would have known her. Padma fights the urge to cry her first tears, the first tears to drip down her face in so long, as his black figure chuckles and laughs at her expense.
‘You know you cannot have your sister, Padma.’ His voice is calm as he rejects her request with the slicing of his hand downwards. As he pushes through the thick air that has accumulated with the smoke, Padma is shattered.
Her voice wobbles, and her head is suddenly filled with voices. Hundreds and hundreds of different keys, different tones. Different keys, different answers. There has to be a way. Her heart is a soaring roller coaster, going down, going up. She can feel a lost hollowness, a tight constriction in her chest. She can feel pain and numbness spreading unpleasantly through her limbs and her scalp prickles on the left side absurdly. She shakes her head slowly. Everything is slow; everything is odd. She looks up into his eyes, past the moustache, past the jewellery. Past all of the extravagance. Past it all, into the eyes that guard the soul she yearns for.
‘Why can’t I have her? Why can’t she be here? She’s me. I’m her. We’re not Padma, or Parvati, or Parvati and Padma. We’re Padma and Parvati Patil. We’re together. We always have been.’
Her voice sinks and her persona is pale and wasted once more. She whispers, ‘She is mine and I am hers. I need her here.’
Yama’s face storms over and he steps closer. The smells are intoxicating, and Padma is drowning in the endless black of the folds of his robe, the rich chocolate brown of his skin. She can see a girl reflected in his medallion, see a face in the rope. She can see herself reflected, and she looks dead. She’s dying for her sister.
‘She was the leader. She was first, I was second, and then we were together. She was always braver. I am weak compared to her. Smarts, where she had bravery. Resistance where she had none. I am worth less. Yamaraj, I beg you, bring her back. Back to me-’ Her voice cracks and she sheds the pent-up tears. She cries in pain, in sorrow and in forgiveness. She’s thought about departing the world to join Parvati, but she knows deep down that –
‘Your sister is beyond your reach, Padma. You know this. You choose to ignore it. You know that she has moved on. Do you not remember you own history?’
Yama interrupts her thoughts, and Padma is stunned. Where is Parvati? If not with Yama in Vaikunta, then where is she?
‘Your sister is not with you anymore. Not in this form,’ Yama intones seriously. His chuckle is gone. All that Padma has imagined about him was a lie, a fallacy all in her mind. He is so different, so powerful and yet so see–through, all at the same time.
‘What form does she take if she’s not here with me?’ Padma cries desperately. Shattered, she grasps the pillows beneath her in anguish. Where is her sister, if she is not in this world?
‘Of your sister’s form, I am unaware. She is no longer your sister. She does not know you. Parvati does not exist. Parvati was a body, a vessel, useless. She does not need it anymore. She simply does not exist.’ His voice is final, kind, and Padma wants to weep at the constant sincerity in his tone. She cannot hate him, for he has done her no wrong. She cannot rejoice at his news, because it is the end of her.
And she cannot be with her beloved, because she does not exist.
‘Who are you?’ she shrieks. Deaf to the world outside of her bedroom, outside of the green walls, she screams. She lets her pain echo and reverberate off the walls. ‘Who are you?’
Yama’s face is in hers in a second. She stares into his eyes, and shocked, realises that they are her own. The spark is one she used to hold, back when she was side-by-side, hand-in-hand with her Parvati.
She recognises herself in his face, and suddenly, he morphs into a healthy version of her and whispers in her own voice, ‘She is still with you. You still have your soul, and she still has hers.’
‘What do you mean?’ Padma whispers to her own face. Searching into her own eyes, she can see a form of sanity, a retention of the old her, the her that had shared her life with Parvati.
‘We are always one with God. Let that comfort you, Padma. Let that be the shield from the pain as you fight for yourself amongst the endless darkness and despair. Let yourself believe that inside, you are all connected. Know that one day, your time will come, and you will be like your sister, freed from this flesh-and-bone prison.
‘One day, you shall eat with our Father. You will be reborn many times, hundreds, thousands – but one day there shall come Moksha and you will be joined with Parvati again. Two beautiful, pure white souls shall be reunited, and you will be Padma and Parvati again.’
Her imagination’s words are so beautiful, and Padma begins to cry. Tears pour down her cheeks like rain. They obscure her vision, blur the smiling Padma dressed in black in front of her and she comes nearer, closer, until they are nose to nose and Padma can smell an intense Lotus scent. She remembers being in the garden with her sister when they were younger. A yellow flower for Padma, and a pink for Parvati. Twins, joined, one.
She stares at her darkening skin as it greedily absorbs the sunlight that she has so long deprived it of. The flowing white clothes hanging off her frail frame only make her skin look darker, make her look healthier. As the days go by, her face takes on more of a round quality and her eyes become less and less prominent.
She can feel the grass under her feet, feel every single strand of grass under them, every small bug that crawls stealthily through the undercover of the blades. She reaches out to one flowering marigold bush and quietly beckons a new butterfly with a crooked finger.
The butterfly flexes its wings, testing the air’s thickness and preparing for its first flight. She reflects back to Yama and smiles as she thinks of her sister emerging in this new world of hers like the butterfly or even, she muses, smiling an actual face-changing smile, that Parvati is this butterfly. She closes her eyes in happiness as she thinks of the freedom that Parvati will have with her wings after emerging from her cocoon. She’ll be able to fly away and come back to the garden.
‘Padma.’
Her mother beckons to her from the door, willing her to come inside with a sad expression on her face. The funeral processions are beginning to start, and Padma knows that when she enters the room, wearing her blessed white clothes to gaze fondly upon the picture of her sister, her twin, her soul, she knows that she will cry.
However, she vows as she tentatively urges the butterfly to begin its new journey into the world, they will not be tears of sorrow as they once were. The tears that will stream proud and freely, unstemmed from her identical brown eyes will be tears of acceptance, of gratitude, and of love.
Dreams of a Fallen Lotus Petal by Lurid
Chapter Notes: All Hindu information was provided by Ginny Weasley Potter, Noldo, Dumbledore Prince and Kumydabookworm.A special thanks to Natasha, Abs & Gary for their help. Special people. Special people indeed, and, indeed >.> Abs is wonderful. Because she risks feeling dead the next morning to beta. Yes Indeedy.