Makriva just came home, and he was soaked from head to toe. His trench coat was dripping with water, which he took off and set aside.
Ridhra was on Makriva, who jumped over and went outside in the rain, splattering water everywhere from the tail.
He was at the front door of the house, thankfully not near the parents' door, and Viriya had closed that beforehand.
Seeing Ownad was covered in concrete and wooden bits, Makriva asked, "What happened to him? Why is he..?"
"Ownad was scratching against the door inside, and the plants fell on him." Viriya replied without much thinking or worrying. That was her plan all along, after all.
Makriva saying, "Ok," then went inside to freshen up.
Makriva, who actually was with her all the time before, who helped her in the first few days almost all the time, felt like a stranger.
When Makriva was inside, Viriya called out to Ridhra, who came hopping inside from the outside rain. Ridhra was wet from the rain, Viriya thought she might dry Ridhra using a cloth, but Ridhra went outside again before that.
Ownad was about to follow Ridhra in the rain. Viriya somehow blocked him from going outside with some effort. Ownad was close to the outside door. Viriya shook off as much concrete and wooden bits from Ownad's fur as she could and took him inside.
Settling Ownad in her room, she came outside and called out for Ridhra again. When Ridhra was inside, Viriya quickly held Ridhra before closing the front door, so Ridhra wouldn't go out. Ridhra's body usually was somewhat slippery, but with the water on the hard scales, it was even more slippery.
After closing the door, Ridhra slipped out of Viriya's hand. She just let Ridhra go, who stayed by the door. And Viriya, when Ridhra slipped from her hand, the feeling felt a bit familiar, but far different. Viriya had felt this in the last dream, where the persona dragged some huge, slippery, hard-scaled creature. And after that, there was the tree. It dawned on Viriya that the creature could be some lizard or snake-like being. She had forgotten about it while thinking about the tree, but the tree wasn't the only weird thing there after all.
She somewhat dried off Ridhra's body, then left Ridhra at the door.
When Makriva was done, after some hesitation Viriya went into Makriva's room to talk with him. Maybe he could at least behave like her brother after talking.
Viriya didn't have too much attachment towards him, but because he was with her for most of the time before and helped her in almost any way he could, she was grateful towards him for sure, maybe somewhat attached to him as well.
Viriya-Anish, he had Ambi, a sister, a sibling. If he-she could find that familiarity from Makriva, why wouldn't she try that.
The door of Makriva's door was half open. Viriya still knocked on it with her right hand. She was trying to use her right hand more in day-to-day use.
First there was no response from Makriva. After knocking again he asked, "What?"
Opening the half-closed door, Viriya said, "Nothing." After pausing a bit she asked, "What happened at the watch tower today?"
In the room, Makriva was lying on the bed and fidgeting with his harmonica.
Viriya didn't notice that at first, but after seeing it she stepped back a little. It was still somehow terrifying, but it didn't seem as scary as the first few times she saw it.
Makriva was looking towards the door while Viriya walked in. He replied, "Nothing new, everything was the same. Attending and balancing others."
Viriya thought he would at least say something about it, and maybe she could talk to him more. But it seemed like Makriva shut the conversation off at the start.
She then asked, "Have you eaten anything? Do you want me to make something?"
After staying still and looking at his harmonica for a while he said, "Sure. But isn't there anything half done already?"
"There was some prepped meat, gave it to Ownad, maybe nothing much left. I will look for something beforehand," Viriya replied in an almost flat tone.
Stopping his fidgeting with the harmonica, Makriva just nodded towards her with the same expression. She slowly backed out of the room and headed towards the kitchen.
In the kitchen, she first looked for what she could cook. Viriya-Anish sometimes had to stay at work, and most of the time they used to order out. But sometimes they cooked as well. If not that good, he at least could cook something. He-she didn't find any loose rice; it was mixed with sorghum and some other grains. She took a handful and soaked it in slightly warm water.
Ownad's meat was different, usually brought fresh. But for them, they had a cold-salt preserver for that. Meat cubes were submerged in it. The salt stayed cooler than the temperature around it.
She took some shrunken cubes out from that and threw them into a hot dry pot with some black pepper-like spice. Slowly some fat melted off from the meat, and the spicy smell of the spice made her throat and nose itch. And the meat cooking in oil, the smell of that was a bit too good, even with the nose and throat burn.
Still working through that, she added enough water to almost completely cover it. After adding the drained grain mixture into the water, she closed the lid of the pot and went out of the kitchen. She was making a porridge-like thing, easier to make than anything else for her.
Coming outside, she saw Makriva sitting near the desk in the outside room. His braided ponytail hair was soaked when he came in; now it was undone, just laying flat at his side.
He was reading a thin book. Keeping it down, he asked in a calm tone, "So what are you making?" Maybe he smiled a little too? Viriya wasn't sure.
"Just things mushed together..." Viriya was kind of short with her response because of their previous conversation. She wasn't sure if Makriva wanted to talk much or not, but at least he had started the conversation.
"Add some trenet leaves into that. The muddy smell will be lesser." Makriva replied as he got up and went into the kitchen.
Viriya followed behind him and saw Makriva taking out some leaves that looked like turmeric leaves from a cabinet.
Those were a little dry. After cutting and washing some of the leaf vegetable, Makriva put it into the same boiling water of grains. It smelled like clay and starch boiled together, and it kind of looked like that too. Kind of sticky, but separated in chunks as well. After adding the leaves, the smell reduced and a nutty smell replaced it.
He said, "You go take rest, I will finish this off," and picked up a ladle.
After waiting there for a little while, thinking if she should stay or not, she just slowly went outside saying, "Ok."
In the outside room, Viriya sat next to the desk where Makriva had sat before. She looked outside. The window was open; the rain was still quite heavy, but water wasn't coming in anymore. The wind direction had changed.
The desk, which was almost empty before, now had a thin book on it. The book Makriva was reading before. The book was wider than its height and it opened from the top rather than the side. It was named Rena-La Shrit on the top of the page. A man and a woman embracing each other were illustrated on the cover. The face of the woman was visible; her eyes were closed with satisfied expression. Her and his hair were spiralling out of the cover. It was almost in black and white with just some colour at some parts of the skin.
Viriya squinted a little too hard after seeing that. It was a little weird for her to see. To distract herself from that she went over the logical part of it and guessed, Maybe hand drawn and printed? Very talented painter.
After some hesitation she opened the book. She was worried about what she would see, but the page she opened was the same page Makriva was reading. It was like a short game which was scribbled with pen. It had dots and those were joined with scribbles. At the top it was named Take a Break.
The game was only on half of the page. The rest of the "Take a Break" section had some painted images; most of them were good. Viriya didn't want to admit it, but some of them seemed bad to her. It also had two standalone stories and a single story which seemed serialized. Among the standalone stories, one was named Looking for Myself, by someone named C.J. The first one was named Closed Room, written by A.K., and the other was Timeless Trail, also done by K.B.
She then went to the table of contents instead of staying there, and looked for what was in the book. Many of the entries on the list were a bit hard to understand in terms of what they actually meant.
Our Neighbours, What Major?, Take a Break, Awakening Day of La Shrit, Price of Petal, Under the Sky, Look for Them, and some more. She was roughly glossing over all of them. Awakening Day caught her attention because she had just attended it and read about it in the letter. Checking the page number of Awakening Day of La Shrit, she went there. It was only one page long, which had a few different segments.
Before those segments it was written:
"Another cycle came and went. It was calm as usual, no one was stupid enough to try something at the centre of it all, the Split of Origin. But some other areas weren't as lucky as the Split."
Reading that, Viriya remembered the robot, more specifically the katayantra attack at Ramarana. She did expect to see that next while reading "other areas weren't lucky." She continued reading the starting segment.
Viriya had only heard the names as names of body parts. She had already been to the "Palm of Her" and "Breast of Her." She guessed, Split of Origin? Was that actually the Genitalia of Her? She didn't really guess; she was pretty sure it was the Genitalia of Her.
"Or actually, maybe that wasn't stupid after all. Parira of Shrastin got a great lead from that commotion."
At Shrastin as well? I was not the bad luck carrier then, great. Well, then they aren't really stupid, are they? Viriya couldn't help but chuckle a little and think. And Shrastin she had heard about at the train stand from the man who came to apologise to them. Viriya remembered the card he gave them. Shaking those thoughts off, she continued reading.
"How can anyone call someone stupid when they are so helpful? And apparently we are not allowed to know about that. We will be back on this at its respective segments, as well as others."
Oh come on. It's just a magazine... Sighing, Viriya continued reading.
"Split of Origin ~ Serenia
I still wonder why..."
Viriya intentionally skipped that part and started to look for Palm of Her, to know what exactly happened there. But even looking through the whole list she couldn't find it. When she looked again she found it. It wasn't named "Palm of Her" as she kept hearing from everyone. It was named "Tree of the Past," and beside that the name Ramarana was written, like the name Serenia beside "Split of Origin." Along with "Tree of the Past," Hollow Whistle and Cage of the Barren Blade were also among Ramarana. But the name Tree of the Past was almost exactly what she had experienced at the Palm of Her, so understanding that this was the Palm of Her wasn't hard.
She was sitting on the chair. After seeing that, she went to the bed in the room and started reading.
"Tree of the Past ~ Ramarana
That tree was the unlucky one. Not the tree — the unlucky one is the thing that tried to steal the flower from the tree, and went unconscious as soon as it picked up the flower.
Did you notice I was using 'it' and 'the thing'? It was because it wasn't a human. It was a katayantra, one of the unseen ones. But against the tree, it didn't stand a chance."
Keeping the book down, she thought about why the writer was writing in so much spiral. It could have been written in a much simpler way. Not that she could change it. She started reading that spiralling text again.
Before she could read the whole thing, Makriva called her. The food was ready. She was a little surprised, because she hadn't been reading for very long, and sorghum needed time to fully cook. But remembering it was the future, the sorghum had maybe evolved or been modified enough to cook quicker.
Going to the kitchen, she noticed Makriva had already plated the food, and on his plate there were a few too many trenet leaves swimming in it. The muddy-nutty smell was filling the kitchen.
They slowly finished eating without much talking. Both talked a little for sure, but just enough to stay at the same place. After eating, she went to the outside room before Makriva and started reading the unfinished Ramarana part from the book again.
***
Makriva wanted to be a bit alone, so he stayed in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes after eating. When he finally went to the outside room, Viriya was already sitting on the bed in that room. Makriva had bottled up his emotions towards Viriya since the day of their return. He was angry for sure, but after the incident at the university he had wanted to talk to her, to console her. But remembering the moment when Viriya claimed that the previous days were just a prank, he couldn't bring himself to talk with her. Then, remembering the question from Viriya about the watch tower, he just said, "A man came to the watch tower to report his kid went missing."
Viriya looked at Makriva with a curious yet surprised face. In a little while that transformed into some kind of recognition. It seemed like she was about to say something, but before she could, Makriva continued, "A woman came as well, whose possessions were stolen."
The words from Viriya, Just a payback, were still eating at him. But not able to stay like a wall towards her, and not letting Viriya say anything back, he continued in a single breath, "Some idiot didn't understand the concept of no. A kid's pet green bird got stolen. A few farmers' animals were eaten, and a few people got scammed by a seer." Not all of this had happened that day; a few were from previous days, and some of that day's situations he didn't even remember. He just said whatever he could at that moment. While he was saying all of it, his loose hair fell in front of his eyes him, because of his movements. He had become quite agitated at some point.
Moving hairs quickly, he kept looking at Viriya, wondering what she might reply, what her reaction might be. Makriva didn't expect a calm reaction from her. He thought she might double down even more. She was calm. Her eyes were widened. She said, "Those were, those were something." After stopping a little she asked, "Any new information about the katayantra of Ramarana?" After a little hesitation she asked again, "Or the bangle?"
Makriva wasn't expecting that. He wasn't really sure what he was expecting. But hearing the question about Ramarana, he did get startled a little. He replied in a normal voice, whatever was normal at that point, "Haven't talked with Maam Khanti, didn't discuss it. The bangle, soon we might have a way to locate that."
Finally, after some deliberation, he asked, "Why? Why did you do it?"
Seeing Viriya's face, he could understand that she knew what he meant. She definitely understood that he was asking about her memory loss prank.
Viriya was quiet for a while, looking downwards, maybe searching for words. After a painfully long time, which could have been just a few moments, she said, "A tall, thin man somehow kidnapped me while I was going towards Upavana. I was unconscious during that. When I opened my eyes, he was towering over me."
Maybe Viriya had said all of that on the day of the prank reveal, but Makriva wasn't in the right headspace at that point to really pay attention to the details. But now, while she was saying it, she looked a bit too guilty, like she was regretting not having told him what happened before.
Viriya continued, "I heard something about killing me, but after I was unconscious again, in the morning I found myself at a random house, and after that you found me."
After that situation, he had met her in the middle of the road, disoriented. Her clothes were ripped, wrapped around some injured parts. He remembered the scene of calling for Viriya, but her not responding. Those were all false, after all, all an act.
Viriya's voice grew even more shaky when she continued with, "I was confused, sad, angry all at the same time about the bangle, about the situation I fell into. I don't know why, but it somehow felt like the right thing to do, to distract attention from the bangle."
After saying all that she stayed silent, as if waiting for Makriva's reply. Viriya was still sitting on the bed and Makriva was standing near it. The physical distance hadn't changed, but the mental distance, maybe that had shortened.
He asked, "So was it all just a scared deflection?" Viriya didn't reply. She kept looking downwards. He asked again, "How did the man look? His face?"
Viriya replied, "The moonlight was there at the shore, but he was standing in the shadow of it. It wasn't visible in the dark."
Makriva had intended to ask how she knew about the seashore then, but Viriya's previous answer was enough to answer both questions.
Not intending to talk more, he started walking towards the stairs while making a "Krr Krr" noise with his mouth to call Ridhra. From somewhere, Ridhra appeared and started to follow Makriva. While he was almost out of the room, Viriya's voice slightly echoed, "I am sorry." Nothing else, no other word.
Makriva stopped for a moment as Ridhra crawled onto his cloth and sat beside his neck. Looking back once towards Viriya, he started walking back to his room.