Lakshmi keeps her eyes down as she eats, a stillness she has to settle deeply to, to keep herself from some terrible something, that she has kept herself to, for years and years and years. So long she wonders what would happen if she did let it crack? Does she even know who she is, if not for this?
But below the table, her foot slides, hooking back, keeping her close. "We burn their bodies. There are prayers sung for them. Then every year, on the anniversary, we honour an image of them and remember them." She reaches for her cup of water.
It's evenly said, her voice sounding distant from her ears. Perhaps, she doesn't look up, around, at the spirits. Because as she speaks, remembers, the room shimmers, changes behind her. The room, once small, unrefined but sturdy and neat as any room in the Gallows, shifts, becoming stone. Becomes details, refined. A room that begets a palace. Shimmering in intricate oil lamps, rising up with great pillars. Like a mirage in a desert, it takes form. Fills, not with just the lonely spirit, standing ever watchful, ever bleeding, but - of maids, dressed in the similar way Lakshmi did, if with less sumptuous fabrics, of guards women and men. Proud in their uniforms, proud in their stance.
Worse, but worse, is that they all look happy as they move back and forth in the room-that-is-not. Silently conversing with each other, a woman so clearly flirting with a guard, a pot balanced on her hip, and a sword on the other side, the guard with a spear in his hand. It gives a feeling - not just of grandness, but of home. And Lakshmi, even so far from it, is completely one with it.
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But below the table, her foot slides, hooking back, keeping her close. "We burn their bodies. There are prayers sung for them. Then every year, on the anniversary, we honour an image of them and remember them." She reaches for her cup of water.
It's evenly said, her voice sounding distant from her ears. Perhaps, she doesn't look up, around, at the spirits. Because as she speaks, remembers, the room shimmers, changes behind her. The room, once small, unrefined but sturdy and neat as any room in the Gallows, shifts, becoming stone. Becomes details, refined. A room that begets a palace. Shimmering in intricate oil lamps, rising up with great pillars. Like a mirage in a desert, it takes form. Fills, not with just the lonely spirit, standing ever watchful, ever bleeding, but - of maids, dressed in the similar way Lakshmi did, if with less sumptuous fabrics, of guards women and men. Proud in their uniforms, proud in their stance.
Worse, but worse, is that they all look happy as they move back and forth in the room-that-is-not. Silently conversing with each other, a woman so clearly flirting with a guard, a pot balanced on her hip, and a sword on the other side, the guard with a spear in his hand. It gives a feeling - not just of grandness, but of home. And Lakshmi, even so far from it, is completely one with it.