12-01-2026, 08:44 PM
Scene: The Next Level
Six weeks had passed since Ahalya's arrival. Six weeks since Kavya’s departure. The memory of Kavya’s terrified final look had begun to blur, softened by the Ashram's relentless rhythm.
Time here did not pass, it dissolved, and questions became harder to hold when your hands were always occupied, when silence was the default, when every moment was structured around service.
Ahalya had stopped noticing the absence of choice. The realization came not with alarm, but with a strange calm. Or perhaps she’d learned to experience it as freedom.
In those six weeks, the Ashram’s unyielding pace had woven itself into her life, and she, in turn, had woven herself into its fabric.
The work had become second nature, a quiet dance of rhythm and labor, sweeping the courtyards, cleaning the temples, preparing simple meals with hands that had learned to move with efficiency, with a purpose she had never known before.
Her body remembered the tasks even when her mind drifted. Each day felt like a brushstroke of time, each movement a prayer. The silence she had once found stifling was now something she could breathe in, something she had come to crave.
"I can no longer remember what the noise of the outside world sounded like," she thought to herself one evening, as she bent over a patch of the garden. "What is it that I've become?"
Yet despite the silence that enveloped the Ashram, there were moments when Ahalya still found herself restless.
There were times when the weight of her own thoughts pressed against her chest, when she could not escape the memory of the girl she had once been, untouched, unformed, just beginning to stretch her wings.
That girl felt distant now, like a half-remembered dream.
Those moments had become fleeting, though, as the Ashram moved like an unbroken river, sweeping her forward, leaving nothing but the faint echo of the past behind. "Was that the old me? Or was that just the beginning of what I am to become?"
It was Meera who came to her after morning meditation, her expression warm with something that looked like pride.
Approval here was rare, and when it came, it carried weight. Ahalya could feel the shift in the air as Meera approached her, the same way a change in the weather might be felt before it was seen.
"Gurujii wishes to see you."
Six weeks had passed since Ahalya's arrival. Six weeks since Kavya’s departure. The memory of Kavya’s terrified final look had begun to blur, softened by the Ashram's relentless rhythm.
Time here did not pass, it dissolved, and questions became harder to hold when your hands were always occupied, when silence was the default, when every moment was structured around service.
Ahalya had stopped noticing the absence of choice. The realization came not with alarm, but with a strange calm. Or perhaps she’d learned to experience it as freedom.
In those six weeks, the Ashram’s unyielding pace had woven itself into her life, and she, in turn, had woven herself into its fabric.
The work had become second nature, a quiet dance of rhythm and labor, sweeping the courtyards, cleaning the temples, preparing simple meals with hands that had learned to move with efficiency, with a purpose she had never known before.
Her body remembered the tasks even when her mind drifted. Each day felt like a brushstroke of time, each movement a prayer. The silence she had once found stifling was now something she could breathe in, something she had come to crave.
"I can no longer remember what the noise of the outside world sounded like," she thought to herself one evening, as she bent over a patch of the garden. "What is it that I've become?"
Yet despite the silence that enveloped the Ashram, there were moments when Ahalya still found herself restless.
There were times when the weight of her own thoughts pressed against her chest, when she could not escape the memory of the girl she had once been, untouched, unformed, just beginning to stretch her wings.
That girl felt distant now, like a half-remembered dream.
Those moments had become fleeting, though, as the Ashram moved like an unbroken river, sweeping her forward, leaving nothing but the faint echo of the past behind. "Was that the old me? Or was that just the beginning of what I am to become?"
It was Meera who came to her after morning meditation, her expression warm with something that looked like pride.
Approval here was rare, and when it came, it carried weight. Ahalya could feel the shift in the air as Meera approached her, the same way a change in the weather might be felt before it was seen.
"Gurujii wishes to see you."
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