-: Pancha Vastra :- ( By Shailu )

[shailu4ever]

 
Back outside.
 
Villagers pull her away.
 
Hands reach for her.
 
Water splashes across the burning walls.
 
Someone shouts numbers.
 
“Two!”
 
And in the gathering crowd, someone whispers something else.
 
“Devi protect him…”
 
Arjun turns around again.
 
Back into the fire.
 
Visibility is almost gone now.
 
His eyes stream with tears. His hands sting where heat has begun to blister his skin.
 
He moves deeper this time.
 
Somewhere inside he hears someone crying.
 
A weak, terrified sound.
 
He follows it.
 
The third woman lies unconscious beside an overturned basket of grain, her hair spread across the floor like dark ink.
 
“Hey,” he mutters, shaking her.
 
No response.
 
He lifts her across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
 
The weight nearly drops him to his knees.
 
But he staggers forward.
 
Step by step.
 
Through walls of heat.
 
When he bursts outside again the villagers cheer in disbelief.
 
“Three!”
 
He has saved three.
 
And yet the fire behind him continues to grow, roaring upward against the rain.
 
 
 
Back in.
 
Inside the granary the fire roars louder now.
 
The roof beams crack like gunshots.
 
He finds the fourth woman near the far wall, trying desperately to drag another woman toward the door.
 
Her strength gives out just as he reaches them.
 
“I will get her,” Arjun coughs.
 
She understood.
 
He almost carried her toward the exit.
 
Outside again.
 
Four.
 
He went in to get the other girl
 
The world dissolves into a terrible rhythm.
 
Smoke.
 
Heat.
 
Pain.
 
Find someone.
 
Drag them out.
 
Breathe.
 
“Five!”
 
Go back.
 
Each rescue becomes harder than the last.
 
The sixth woman clings to a pillar, refusing to leave until Arjun promises the others are safe.
 
The seventh is trapped beneath a fallen beam, and it takes everything he has left to lift it long enough to pull her free.
 
By the time he drags her outside, his hands are burned raw.
 
By this sixth trip his hands are blistered and raw.
 
The villagers are shouting now.
 
“Enough! The roof is going to fall!”
 
But Arjun can still hear screaming inside.
 
Two voices.
 
He goes back.
 
By the seventh trip his lungs feel like they are filled with sand.