-: Pancha Vastra :- ( By Shailu )

[shailu4ever]

 
The shape of her inner life, the things she thinks about when she's alone, the dreams she doesn't speak aloud.
 
Fear, because what if he's not enough? What if she removes every layer and he doesn't know what to do with what she reveals? What if he fails her somehow, disappoints her, proves himself as shallow as Rhea always said he was?
 
Reverence, because she's offering him something sacred. Not just her body. Her trust. Her vulnerability. The parts of herself she's kept hidden for twenty years. And he doesn't feel worthy of that gift.
 
And underneath everything else, something newer, something he can't quite name.
 
The sensation of walls crumbling inside himself.
 
The camera he's carried like a shield for years feels very far away.
 
The distance he's maintained between himself and life feels like it's collapsing.
 
She's not the only one who'll be naked by the end of this, he realizes. She'll remove five layers of cloth. But I'll have to remove something too. Every wall. Every defense. Every comfortable lie I've told myself about who I am and what I want.
 
The thought terrifies him.
 
And excites him.
 
He walks back through the garden, trying to calm himself.
 
A butterfly lands on his shoulder, iridescent blue, its wings opening and closing slowly. He stays very still, barely breathing, not wanting to disturb it.
 
It stays for perhaps ten seconds.
 
Then lifts away, spiraling upward into the golden air.
 
Even the butterflies are different here, he thinks. Unafraid. As if the island has an agreement with every living thing, you won't be harmed here. You can be soft here. You can be vulnerable.
 
If only humans could learn that so easily.
 
He finds the lotus pond and sits on the smooth stone beside it.
 
The water is perfectly still, a dark mirror reflecting sky. Lotus flowers float on the surface, pink and white, their petals barely open, still holding dew in their curved centers like tiny cups of gathered light.
 
He remembers reading somewhere that lotuses root in mud but bloom clean.
 
That they need the darkness to create the beauty.
 
Maybe that's what Meera is offering, the mud as well as the flower. The whole truth, not just the pretty parts.