Misc. Erotica The Goddess (COMPLETED) - By Novelist Casanova

[novelistcasanova]

We were still walking and talking quietly when the sound of a vehicle reached us through the trees.

The low engine noise was unusual on this forest path in the evening. Instantly the three of us moved off the path and hid behind the thick trunks of two large trees. My first thought was the sand smugglers. After everything that had already happened, the possibility of Arjun or the others appearing here made my stomach tighten.
The vehicle came closer. It was not a truck.
An ambulance, its white body dirty from the forest roads, passed slowly along the narrow path. The headlights cut through the fading evening light for a moment and then moved ahead.

Behind it, running and stumbling on the uneven ground, was Malliga.
She was screaming, her voice raw and broken.
“Stop! Stop the vehicle! Give it back!”
I stepped out from behind the tree at once.
“Malliga!” I shouted.
She turned, recognised us, and ran toward me. Her face was streaked with tears and dust. When she reached us she could barely speak. Sathyavathi and Sethupathi came out from behind the trees as well.
“They stole her,” Malliga gasped, clutching my arm tightly.
“Arjun… Muthu… Bala… the three of them. I overheard them talking near the temple. They took the Goddess idol. They put it in that ambulance. They are taking her to Chennai to sell her to some foreign gang for a huge amount of money. We have to stop them. We have to save her!”
The words hit all three of us like a physical blow.

The Goddess was not just stone. She was the heart of our village. She protected the twenty-five families. She watched over the river, the forest, the crops, the children, the births and the deaths. Without her the temple would stand empty. The village would lose its soul. Bad fortune, fear, and helplessness would settle over every house. The thought of our Goddess being sold to strangers in a foreign land, locked away or broken for money, filled me with a desperate, almost physical pain.
Sathyavathi’s face had gone pale. Even young Sethupathi stood frozen, his hands gripping the twisted handlebar of his cycle. Malliga’s shoulders were shaking.
“We cannot let them take her,” I said, my voice tight.

“If the Goddess leaves this forest, everything will collapse. We have to bring her back.”
Sathyavathi recovered first, though her eyes were bright with the same desperation I felt.
She looked down the path where the ambulance had already disappeared around a bend, then turned to us with sharp decision.
“These roads are narrow,” she said quickly.
“Hairpin bends all the way. If we push rocks and stones onto the path we can slow them or force them to stop. That will give us time.”
She turned to Sethupathi.

“You have the cycle. Go back to the village as fast as you can. Tell your grandfather everything. Tell him the Goddess has been stolen and that Arjun, Muthu and Bala are taking her to Chennai in an ambulance to sell her. Your grandfather will bring all the village men. Once they reach here they can stop these three bastards properly. But until the men arrive, we have to waste their time. We have to slow their escape. Every minute we delay them is a minute closer to the village men reaching us.”
The boy’s eyes were wide with shock, but he nodded hard.
“Yes, akka. I will go now.”
He turned the cycle around on the path, gripped the sideways handlebar as best as he could, and began pedalling and pushing back toward the village with urgent speed.
Sathyavathi looked at me and then at Malliga. The same desperate determination was in all our faces.
“We stay,” she said.
“We block the road. We push stones, we create obstacles, we do whatever we can to slow them down. We only need to hold them long enough for the village men to arrive. The Goddess cannot leave this forest. We will not allow it.”

I nodded, the fear and the fierce need to protect our Goddess burning together in my chest. Malliga wiped her face with the end of her saree and nodded as well, her jaw set.
The three of us turned and began moving quickly along the path in the direction the ambulance had taken, searching for the first hairpin bend where rocks and loose stones could be pushed onto the narrow road. Every step carried the same desperate thought: we had to delay them. We had to save our Goddess.