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

[novelistcasanova]

The village men and our Village Head arrived not long after we had dressed and secured the Goddess idol in the ambulance. They came through the forest with torches and worried faces, expecting the worst. When they saw the three of us standing there — tired but alive — and heard what we had done, silence fell over them for a long moment.

Then the pride came.

The Village Head looked at Sathyavathi, Malliga and me with something close to reverence. The men who had once been too afraid to fight the sand smugglers now stood taller because three of their women had finished what they could not. They placed the Goddess back in the temple that same night with full honour. No one spoke of the details of how Muthu, Balu and Arjun had died. It was enough that they were gone and the Goddess had returned.

In the days that followed, the village celebrated us quietly at first, then openly. When the Seed Sowing Festival arrived, the entire community treated the three of us as if we had brought the rains ourselves. We were given the first blessings. The older women touched our feet. The men who had once looked away in shame now looked at us with respect.
Soon the elections came.

Our Village Head contested with the quiet strength of a man who had seen what his people were capable of. He won. The government at the state level changed not long after. The new administration took sand smuggling seriously for the first time. The rivers were protected. The trucks stopped coming. The forest around our village breathed again.

Then the government invited us to Chennai.
On a grand stage in the heart of the city, under bright lights and in front of a large crowd, Sathyavathi, Malliga and I were called forward. Ministers, officials and ordinary people filled the hall. The three of us stood together as our story was told — how three ordinary village women had protected their Goddess when no one else could. We were given bravery awards that day. The minister said our courage would stand as an inspiration to every woman and every citizen who refused to surrender what was sacred. Cameras flashed. People rose to their feet. For a few minutes the entire stage belonged to three women from a small forest village who had refused to let their deity be stolen.

All of that happened in 1996.

Thirty years have passed.

It is 2026 now.

I live in Canada. My sons are grown and settled. I have grandsons who know me only as the quiet grandmother who cooks too much and tells them stories about a village in Tamil Nadu with a powerful Goddess and three women who once refused to let her be stolen. I never tell them everything. Some truths are better left in the dark of a cave beside a waterfall.
Sathyavathi and Malliga are still in the village. We speak on the phone sometimes. The temple is well cared for. The river runs clean. The sand smugglers never returned.
I am content.
The Goddess is safe.

And the story of what we did that evening in the forest remains ours alone.

— The End —

Regards 
Novelist Casanova