“Of course you don’t,” laughed Nritti. “Self-loathing would not become you.”
Behind me, the strange silver trees of the ashram stretched longingly toward the sky. I understood how they felt. It was only natural to want to feel part of something bigger than yourself. I glanced at my arm. Violet clouds shivered to life on my skin. A storm cloud kissed my wrist. And yet for all that I wore dusk and night… I was not part of the story. It is the price of immortality and eternal youth to never recognize your own fate in the stars. If we must live forever, then we must live blind.
I guarded the stars with my body. I let the constellations dance across my skin as if they could draw sustenance from the air I breathed. I coaxed nighttime into the world and guarded that sacredcusp of time before the world slipped once more into a tomorrow. I kept the past and present divided by a dance.
But it didn’t matter how many days and nights or dusks and dawns passed. The truth was that no one could do what I did. And yet the entire world was as blind to me as the stars were blind to us all. As much as I loved the night, I wanted to break free of it as well. I wanted to be more than a canvas for stars and stories. I wanted to make my own.
Nritti looked behind me to the ashram. “Everyone wants to know where this place is. I bet there’s already a crowd waiting for those dream fruits.”
I followed her gaze to the orchard behind us. When I came here, the ashram became renowned for the strange fruit that sprang from the earth—slender, silver trees where fat purple fruit dragged the boughs to the earth like soul mates inexorably pulled to one another. The fruit always tasted cold, no matter how hot the day. All day I labored on those dreams, on what snippet of reality would be stretched thin and packed inside that fruit. When midnight fell, I came to the Night Bazaar and sold them for the price of someone recounting their day. I learned and listened, and they ate and dreamed.
“Your point?” I asked.
“You know, in my despair of you not joining me forTeej,I may accidentally let the location of this ashram and your famous orchard slip…”
I narrowed my eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would never!” she said, feigning hurt. “But maybe I would.”
“And you callmemanipulative.”
“I’m just trying to—”
“—look out for me, do what’s best for me, instruct me in all the ways of living and point out the sun in case I mistook it for an orange.”
She considered this. “Yes.”
“I’m not hopeless.”
“But you are sheltered. And stubborn as a mule.”
“It could be worse. I could have the face of a mule too. I’m counting my blessings.”
“Or you could have my face,” she said. “Count your blessings that you don’t.”
In the fading dusk, Nritti looked silvered.Apsaraswere always beautiful, but she was a gem even among them. It didn’t matter that her hair had fallen out of its braid or that her clothes were crumpled. She looked more polished than a gemstone that had gulped down the moon.
For as long as I had known her, Nritti had the kind of beauty that earned her a place among the stars. When she entered a room, light clung to her. When she left a room, light seemed a mere legend. No radiance compared. But it came with a price. One that wore on her. I nudged her arm.
“How many marriage proposals this time?” I asked.
“The usual.”
“About a hundred?”
“Give or take.”
“Any entertaining acts of idiocy amongst all your besotted suitors?”
She smacked my arm, laughing in spite of herself. “Don’t mock their love.”
“Why not? They mock you with the assumption that you’d sayyes.” I rolled my eyes. “More than that, they mock you by assuming there’s nothing more than your beauty and dancing.”
“Isn’t there?”
“You sing too.”
Another smack. Another laugh. But this one a little more hollow.
