Kshar flicked his forked tongue, searching for the little girl. There she was again.
Though again wasn’t quite right. Again implied something happening once, and then happening once more. This was the same place, the same moment, just a different could-be. And it wasn’t really happening.
Surely, the Great-Divyas have a word for it.
The first few times Kshar died, the implosion had caught him mid-slither. Now he kept his distance from where the scooter would crash, far down the market’s cliffside terraces.
You never get used to dying, no matter how many times you wake up from it.
He slipped through a narrow gap between two shops with living, breathing walls. His thick serpentine tail pressed against the ground, steadying him as he rose upright upon it.
Years of vertical posture had settled a dull ache into his spine where his torso became tail. It was a price all urban naags paid to fit in. His body was built for sliding along the ground, not this strained mimicry of bipeds.
He tightened the tension-weave vest around his middle. The fabric’s hair-thin bands flexed like tiny muscles, bracing his spine. His long, scaled fingers worked the fastenings. The contraption eased the pain, but never enough.
His great-grandmother would have hissed at such compromises, and even more so at…
Source: Scroll.in
