Ariyaan’s knees tremble as we stand before Lord Shiva. It is a sight to behold, a moment to cherish, and a victory to savor that his penance to seek Shiva’s boon has finally borne fruit. He drops to the ground, lays flat on his stomach, and prostrates before the Cosmic Destroyer.
Shiva is magnanimous in form as he is at heart. He sits atop the giant craggy mound ringed with jagged spikes of charred earth and melted stone. This entire cave, with a dome for its roof, is concealed in smoke and stinks of cannabis. We stand in a clearing, in the eye of this cyclonic haze within which dance human-like shapes—Shiva’s worshippers with ash-smeared faces, eyes pruned red, and hair hanging in dreads, who have earned his grace and now prance in eternal bliss.
To our right beats the legendary damaru; the twin-headed drum’s uniquely resonant notes define the world’s pulse. The ground quakes under the might of Shiva’s foot tapping to its rhythm.
“O Lord Shiva,” stammers Ariyaan, but he is inaudible in the damaru’s throes. I urge him to speak louder. “Please set your eyes on this grateful mortal seeking your audience. I’d like—”
A gruff groan erupts from the mound, and the quaking gives way to a deep rumble. Shiva’s silhouette shifts, but darkness shrouds all of him. “Your gratitude is of no use. Leave.”
The Lord’s voice is so dismissive and devoid of divinity. Is this even the Shiva that Ariyaan seeks? Ariyaan would need more than his fingers and toes to count the years he spent penancing on the side of Mount Kailash. Lost in prayer and meditation, he even forsook the memories of his wife and children in the singular pursuit of Shiva’s audience. All he gets now is a callous rejection.
Yet, this cannot be anyone but Shiva. No entity, tangible or abstract, can imitate his might. Ariyaan rises, his hands joined in prayer, and gazes at the god, no feature of whom is discernible except the topknot that secures the coarse locks of his hair. “Lord, please don’t turn me away. I’ve come seeking a boon for my austere penance in your name.”
“A boon is but a drop of nectar in this sea of poison choking me.”
Ariyaan hesitates. Shiva is sensible, but there is no limit to his unbridled wrath if you stir his temper. Ariyaan is too agreeable; much good it did him on Earth. I remind him how much he has sacrificed to earn his right to demand Shiva’s attention. Who gives a damn about appeasing a god’s ego when the entire world is about to end? Wilting memories of Earth—recurrent disease, vicious wars, drowning sea and angry land and choking air—return, instilling a sense of pure dread.
“Is it true, then?” Ariyaan’s voice breaks. “Does Earth really drown in poison, O Lord? Is it well on its way to a definitive end? Can’t this apocalypse be delayed, canceled even?”
Shiva’s foot taps again, punctuating his rumble with quakes. Men continue dancing around us, cloaked in smoke that has since switched to swirling at a tornadic speed.
“Tell me! Are the gods so high and mighty now that they won’t even help us?”
The quakes perish, and one of the jagged spikes crumbles into dust. “It is the Trilokalypse,” says Shiva in his baritone. “It claims not only your realm, but the six worlds above it and the seven below. Everything will pop like an over-inflated balloon.” Shiva’s silhouette blows up his cheeks and pops them with his hands. The shockwave breaks the sound barrier. The damaru keeps beating.
“Such childish informality is unbecoming of you, Lord,” says Ariyaan. I concur. “I don’t care about the worlds, whether they vanish. Spare my family. That’s all I want.”
Shiva scoffs. “Is that the boon you came seeking?”
“Scientists said the Last Age isn’t due for another hundred millennia. Then, they turned around and said it’s here already, that we barely have a few decades, if not a century, left. You’re the Cosmic Destroyer, so I’m here to ask you to stop this madness and let us live.”
Shiva bursts out laughing, each cackle crashing like thunder. “Cosmic Destroyer? You dare mock me, mortal?” Sudden as it was, his mirth morphs into a growl. “You dare accuse me of this foreboding doom that encroaches upon us? Is it all my fault?”
The time Ariyaan spent in penance has eroded him like wind whittles stone. Clothes hang about his brown, wrinkled nakedness in tatters, his gray hair is tangled in dreads, and his nails curve like the horns of a ram. However, as he stands, his back upright and his shoulders squared in defiance, only pride and relief fill my soul. “Who else is to blame?”
I expect Shiva to squish Ariyaan like an insect. “Perhaps you’re right,” he says instead. “Perhaps it is my fault Trilokalypse is here. Then, is it your fault my Ganga is dead?”
Ariyaan blanches. He recalls his mother’s tales of River Ganga: Shiva’s earthly consort flowing from the locks of his hair, descending upon Earth at Gangotri and draining into the Bay of Bengal. A river so pure, people took holy dips and packaged her waters for religious cleansing and offering. Then, people also filled her with their dead and cremated, not to mention the dumps from the industries and sewage alike. The scorching heat finally bled her dry.
The rumbling returns. It does not limit its touch to the feet but sends a shock up the knees and pools at the pit of Ariyaan’s stomach. He takes a cautious step back.
“Isn’t it also your fault my son is dead?”
“Lord Shiva, I—”
“You humans poached until you left no elephant alive in flesh or spirit. Not even my son.” He sounds hushed, shocked. Not a sliver of light exposes his face or body. “Shakti, oh darling, you wouldn’t have left if Ganesh were alive. So, it is your fault she left, is it not?” He roars. “Is it not?”
The damaru’s music stops, plunging the cave into silence. Ariyaan gulps. At the center of Shiva’s forehead, a pocket of light blinks on. Red as lava, it is a vertically oriented eye: his potent Third Eye that embodies the entire power vested in his meditations.
“You’re an ignorant fool,” growls Shiva as his eye blooms, redness gaining charge. “If I’m the Cosmic Destroyer, must I not destroy your ignorance?”
Ariyaan does not wait for the answer. Screaming, he scampers as the first focused plasma beam scorches the spot where he stood a few moments ago. The stone melts into a pool of lava.
Before it can cool down, Shiva shoots another beam. A spike around the mound bursts apart. Ariyaan ducks, hands over his head. Chunks of broken rocks rain like hail. He makes it one piece to the haze. Men who once danced in joy squat here with hands over their ears.
The laser cuts through the smoke easily, leaving a trail of liquid stone and pulverized flesh. Hordes of men, ardent worshippers, obliterate like they hold no meaning at all. Their blood has no time to stain the rock. It vaporizes in the blink of an eye. Ariyaan screams as he plows through the volleys of smoke, leaving a trail of evidence of his whereabouts.
“Your kind ruined me!” Shiva’s beam makes erratic shifts in trajectory. “And you dare to not only accuse but also deceive me with your petty presence?”
“Somebody, please help!” wails Ariyaan. “Show mercy, O Lord!” He sees nothing but pale whiteness everywhere he turns. The floor is firm, but the laser’s charged pursuit, its buzzing heat and blinding trail of orange light, drives Ariyaan to the brink of madness.
In his pit of despair, just as he submits, a web of gold shining like—brighter than—the sun unwinds. Strong fibers of the metal twang as if plucked by a cosmic hand, belting out a strange, discordant but pleasant music. They ensnare Ariyaan, swirling and binding his limbs. He wrestles, unsure if it is a foe or friend. Unable to run with his feet bound, he falls as I look on helplessly.
The fibers’ grip lacks pressure. The haze vanishes. There is no cave or stone, but lush white beach sand littered with conches. The gentle rush of waves fills his ears as Ariyaan stands up. The golden threads still hold him hostage. Unnerved, dazed, and bedraggled, he turns about his feet to face the ocean even as the rancid odor of foul milk replaces the stink of cannabis.
Contrary to how we picture the upper realms, filled with blue skies and drifting clouds and floating divinities, the overwhelming feeling has so far been of disappointment.
Ariyaan curls his toes and gags, wanting to hurl but unable to. Even the bile in his system has run dry. “What is this place? Where am I?” He gags again. “It smells like…”
“Welcome to the Ocean of Milk, dear Ariyaan.”
We fear Lord Shiva or one of the dancing men has found us, but this voice is peaceful and calm. The gold binding pulls Ariyaan, swiveling him like a wound-up top until he comes face-to-face with a smiling man clothed in brown robes, sporting shoulder-length hair and wooden sandals. In one hand he holds an odd device: a pair of wooden blocks sandwiching a neatly arranged row of crotal cymbals. He clacks the blocks, and the cymbals crash. Golden fibers emerge from the clenched fist of his other hand.
“W-who are you?” Ariyaan croaks. “Why have you tied me up?”
“You’re welcome.” The man looks like a divine sage. “If not for my timely arrival, Shiva would’ve blown you to inexistence.” He sighs. “Anyway, you shouldn’t be here to start with. It must be the glitch in the Cosmatrix. Allow me to escort you back to Earth.”
“No, no, hold on. Who even are you?”
The sage tilts his head and laughs, clacking his wooden instrument. “I’m known as Narada. Soothsayer and divine bard, messenger of the gods, son of Lord Brahma and Lady Saraswathi.”
“Your name’s familiar.” I tell him it is beside the point. “Thanks for saving me, that was...” There is no savory way to verbalize what Lord Shiva did. To get him to grant a boon, Ariyaan was supposed to have meditated from the summit of Mount Kailash. His excellent karma for being a loyal spouse and a loving father who never even flew his car into a restricted air space could still not get him to the peak. Yet somehow, we had made it to Shiva’s abode, thanks to a glitch.
It does not matter. Here we are, to leave without the boon is to accept defeat. Ariyaan seems coaxed, he acts gentle even now. But I refuse to give up. “As recompense for endangering my life with a glitch, I demand you take me to Lord Vishnu. As Cosmic Conservator, he must preserve my family when apocalypse strikes.”
“Such vitriol,” Narada says to a breathless Ariyaan. “I’m afraid Vishnu no longer grants boons. The last few decades have seen heavy shakeups. Now, he runs Thoughts & Prayers. His avatars tend to litanies beamed from temples all over.” He chuckles. “Now, let’s not digress—”
“What about your dad? Isn’t he the Cosmic Creator? Is he too busy making a new malaise or a war as if there aren’t enough plaguing us already?”
“Creation, conservation, and destruction are inertial processes that we can’t stop in time. I’m afraid you’re forty-two years too late for a rewind.”
What a horror! Is this a cruel trick? When Ariyaan set out to climb Mount Kailash, there were forty-two years for the apocalypse to come to fruition. His courage sags under the truth that he has spent all that time in penance, sitting so still that ice built a fortress atop his mortal body while the world had hurtled toward its end. “Oh gods. Oh gods.” He seethes, this anger is all his. “You’ve kept me waiting until the end knowing full well it’s all the time I have. Time I’ve spent away from home.” He remembers his wife and children now, a relentless barrage of emotions and memories waging a war in his head until he is riddled with guilt and sorrow. His voice resurges into a yell. “A hundred millennia’s worth of life, you wish to snap just like that.”
Narada’s smile fades. “Do you believe we have a choice in what is to happen?” He points at the Ocean of Milk. “Do you think we willfully poisoned the sacred ocean until it curdled?”
Even as Ariyaan grapples with Narada’s questions, I recall Lord Shiva’s words: It is the Trilokalypse. It claims not only your realm, but the six worlds above it and the seven below. I push Ariyaan to speak for me. “I thought it was just the Earth that’s dying. I don’t get all this.”
Narada chuckles, but there is no mirth in it. He flicks his fiber-holding hand at the ocean, and the ground rolls backward, propelling us forward.
“What’s happening?” Ariyaan says as I panic.
“We’re traipsing. I think you deserve an explanation for your troubles.”
We traipse past the conch-filled beach and over the Ocean of Milk. Benevolent devas and nefarious asuras churned this ocean using Mount Mandara that looms at the horizon. From the milk, they extracted the nectar that made the devas immortal. The same ocean is now reduced to water with different things floating on it: clumps of curd, silky robes, gauntlets, bracelets, jeweled crowns, bodies. Bodies! Ariyaan gasps. I am speechless.
Corpses dot the entire ocean like they once filled River Ganga. We pass Mount Mandara. If Earth burns, the other upper realms are ablaze. “Madness,” Ariyaan breathes.
“Not quite,” Narada says. “It’s UV rays. With the ozone gone, the milk split. We reached out to Lord Surya, but despite being the solar deity, he has his limits against the cosdemic.”
I wonder what cosdemic means, but Ariyaan is too shocked at the surrounding breakdown. I do not blame him. He shakes his head, but it is my mind that spins. “This is all a grand illusion, right, Narada? You’re not real, none of this is. Is it a test of my resolve to seek Lord Shiva’s boon? Have I failed? Have forty-two years passed for real or am I still on Mount Kailash, hallucinating?”
“Reality is often more sobering than myths and legends, Ariyaan. Sadly, you’ve spent the prime of your life in penance. Still, you need solace. That’s why I’m taking you to Lord Vishnu.”
“You are?” Ariyaan says in disbelief. “Like, right now?”
“Now is all we have.” Behind us, Mount Mandara has reduced to a speck. We have traipsed a long way across the ocean; its stench is fading. Ahead looms a tall structure, a tower. It glimmers in the diffused ambient light. As we approach, it is apparent the tower is covered in butter, a never-ending supply that bursts from the top and cascades in clumps and oodles. Unlike the rotting white in the ocean, the glistening rolls of butter are pure like freshly packed snow and pillowy like clouds.
“Oh, don’t be fooled,” says Narada as we step on the spiral-shaped island upon which this tower stands. He retracts the golden threads, and Ariyaan regains the freedom of movement he had at Shiva’s cave. “It isn’t real butter. Vishnu hired an architect to create this mirage so his employees don’t lose their morale by catching sight of the ocean.” The curtain of butter parts to let us in.
A gust of cold recycled air blasts Ariyaan’s face, carrying the sound of a sea of murmurs from the employees taking a staggering volume of prayers from hysterical temple priests. Cubicle farms stretch from the foyer. There are ten additional floors, but Narada walks to a glass-doored room on the same floor as the foyer. He knocks thrice, then swings the door inward.
“Let’s call it what it is,” says the blue-skinned god from the high-back chair at the head of the oblong table. Flanking him are his avatars, five on each side. “You screwed up, Kalki.”
Kalki, the tenth avatar, is a fine young man, likely the age Ariyaan was when he began his penance. Dark hair clusters over his broad shoulders as he sits with his back to us. I spot each of his preceding avatars frozen on their chairs, their gazes focused on the little screens before them.
“I’m telling you, Lord,” Kalki says, “it’s nothing but a clerical error.”
“Which has delayed the submission due three days ago.” Vishnu clucks his tongue in mock surprise at Narada. “Here comes Lord Brahma’s son. What do you wish to tell him, Kalki? That his father better keep waiting on our updates and not submit the Cosmic Report at all?”
Kalki tosses a cursory but dark, brooding look at Narada. It prickles Ariyaan’s skin when Kalki’s gaze pans and rests on him. Kalki grinds his jaws in consternation before rising and joining his hands to Vishnu in prayer. “I’ll fix this.” He takes his leave.
“Bad timing, O Lord?” Narada says, barely acknowledging the charged atmosphere.
“Bad timing is a mark of your punctuality,” Vishnu says cheekily before eyeing the avatars who surround him. “I suggest each of you proofread your sections again. I want no excuses.”
One after the other, the nine incarnates—the fish, the turtle, the boar, the lion, the dwarf, the soldier, the prince, the diplomat, the saint—depart in haste. Vishnu rises; he is at least seven feet tall, and Ariyaan in his shriveled state looks like an infant next to its parent.
“Who do we have here?” asks Vishnu, pacing closer. His supple skin shines with the allure of the night sky, rippling in higher dimensions that mortal sight is simply too primitive to capture. His direct but pleasant eye-contact and disarming smile are magnetic. If he so chooses, he can fuel all fourteen worlds with his aural energy, yet he blinds himself to our abysmal fate.
While I brood, Narada introduces Ariyaan to Vishnu and conveys the purpose of our visit; the glitch that has enabled us access to this higher realm.
“It doesn’t matter how he got here,” Vishnu says. “It matters he’s here now. I’ll be damned if I turn him around without listening to his concerns.” He pulls the seat where the ferocious lion-headed, man-bodied avatar sat earlier. “Ariyaan, is it?” Mystified, the man sits. “What would you like to eat? Some sweets roasted in hot ghee, white butter?” He chuckles at Ariyaan’s deer-eyed stare. “Here at Thoughts & Prayers, devotee satisfaction is our top priority.”
“I see,” says Ariyaan as I gather myself. “Their well-being isn’t, I suppose?”
Vishnu’s smile stays. His penetrating gaze lingers. “We understand you’re hurt—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Lord, but you’re no different from Lord Shiva.” Words rush out of Ariyaan like a deluge. “At least he has the grace to not live in ignorance but accept the darkness that awaits us. You’re here creating illusions of butter and giving people false hope.”
Vishnu sighs and paces to his seat. Unlike the jewels and silk sashes we see him wearing in temples on Earth, all he wears here is a tunic and dhoti. His hair, long like Narada’s, is parted at the center but combed sideways. “In dire times when there’s no way but certain end, all people need is a helping hand. A shoulder to lean on, for someone to listen.”
“No, what they need is salvation. Deliverance from their mortal bodies.”
“Only if Earth alone is the object of this suffering. It isn’t alone, is it?”
Ariyaan’s shoulders slouch at the humbling truth. “Is that what cosdemic is all about?”
“Unlike pandemics, Earth’s degradation impacts all fourteen worlds. It’s why we moved up the Trilokalypse.”
“How did it all get so bad?” Ariyaan yells. He sounds angrier than he means to. Perhaps it is my anger that has bled into him. “What are all the devas doing? Where’s their king? Is he busy sleeping with his apsaras and courtesans?”
“With the Ocean curdled,” Narada says, “devas could no longer extract soma. Once their source of immortality ran out, they dropped dead. Ladies Lakshmi and Saraswathi vaccinated some with their blessings of fortune and wealth, but only a few, including King Indra, survived.”
“I see your pain,” Vishnu says as we gape at Narada. “Reality overwhelms even the fiercest of gods. You’ve seen Shiva in his primordial cave. Brahma is at the brink of burnout trying to finish his report to the Brahman. It takes everything in me to move this ship as close to land as I can while she sinks. It’s in this capacity that I advise you to let Narada escort you to Earth. Spend this time not debating with the upper realms, but in the company of the people you love.”
“It’s been forty-two years. What if my family is already dead?”
“Your wife and children still live, Ariyaan. Time has indeed waned them like it does to all mortals, but they live. They await your return each day. Not a sunrise or sunset passes without your wife calling Thoughts & Prayers to put in a word for your safety.”
Ariyaan weeps. It is ugly. At once, the muscles in his wrinkled face shatter his composure, his eyes shed urgent tears, his cracked lips pull back to squeal. Unmindful of this pitiful display of human helplessness, Vishnu uses the moment to share a look with Narada. Their eyes don’t move, but a myriad of questions and answers volley back and forth. These are emotions beyond my grasp, and I cannot decode them. In the end, Narada helps a broken Ariyaan to his feet, and we exit.
Outside, Ariyaan sniffles and wipes tears off his cheeks as Narada looks on. “This is worse than I thought. The upper realms don’t fare any better than the lower ones.”
“You’d know especially all about the lower realms, hmm, dear Maran?” Narada smirks.
I think it is a jest, a test. But Narada does not play mischief without purpose. He did utter my name with utmost seriousness. He thinks I am capable of this very thought. I push Ariyaan to speak on my behalf, as he has done so far. “How long have you known?”
“The upper realms might’ve become decadent, but Vishnu still has situational awareness into the lower realms, thanks to his interns. They’re quite good at tracking deserters like you.”
Panic displaces my snark. “Please don’t banish Ariyaan. I just want my son to be happy.”
“You always have, even if you had to resort to a path of violence on Earth.”
A life riddled with crime and bloodshed, which continues to haunt my soul. “Everything I did, I did it for my family, for Ariyaan. Didn’t I punish myself for it, staying away and letting not even my shadow fall on him? It’s the price I paid so he was never tainted by my ugly life. Now, look at him!” My voice shakes. “Look at the karma he’s accrued in such as brief life.”
“And you amassed so much negative karma that you became an agent in the underworld.”
“Yet I deserted, didn’t I?” I snapped. “The crimes of humanity affected us first, all we did was to try and reset the balance.”
“Even if your kind’s methods caused earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, yes?”
“How were we supposed to know we were affecting each other?”
Narada sighs. “Yes, perhaps, it is too much to expect from the asuras to know that the fourteen worlds do, in fact, have a complex interplay across the higher dimensions.”
“Are you blaming the lower realms for this Trilokalypse nonsense?”
Narada feigns surprise by holding his palms up. “I said no such thing now, did I?”
I animate Ariyaan’s body like I have so far, pinching the space between his brows. “Is that it, then? You’ve made your point, and I’ve made mine. There’s no point to this exercise.”
Narada does not reply but snares Ariyaan again with the golden threads emerging from his hand. Soon, we resume traipsing over the ocean. “I know you have more fight left in you, Maran. Your son died sixty days into his penance, but you possessed his soul before Yama could claim it for judgment. You animated his corporeal form and nourished his soul with yours. You still do.”
“It’s the least a father can do for his son.” I bear no shame, no remorse. “I died before I could make sure he had a better life. And even if I couldn’t save him from his death, I’ll make sure his family is safe, that they survive the apo—the Trilokalypse.”
It is now I realize, we are not headed for the beach of conches. Water drops fine as dust sizzle and sputter as they contact the threads embalming Ariyaan. There, as mists with the scent of flowers and fruits clear up, I spot apsaras, divine women of preternatural beauty, form, and charm.
“What is this place?” I mutter as Ariyaan’s chest swells.
“Welcome to the Haven,” Narada says, gesturing at a garden of lush trees, blue skies, dew-crested grass, and merry animals and birds. Scantily clad apsaras with waist-length hair, buxom figures, and swaying hips mill about. They are pretty, but there is no life in their laughter, no fire in their dance, no power in their mudra. Instead, they move in mechanized steps, their penciled eyes vacant, their lips stretched to look like that of dolls, their skins polished to a waxy finish.
“You don’t need Vishnu’s Thoughts & Prayers, Shiva’s wrath, or even Dad’s sermons. The apsaras are your saving grace. This frontier is untainted by the cosdemic, quarantined.”
“But they all look so… plastic.”
“You know how impressionable they are. They traipse to Earth and return with a new fad or a trend. We’ve seen everything from botched surgeries to social media trends, too many to even keep track of. But worry not, they’re great at reading the human pulse and increasing the dopamine levels when low. Simply subscribe your soul to their charms.”
I am flummoxed but push past. “I don’t understand how apsaras can grant me the boon.”
“They can’t; it’s the whole point of Trilokalypse. But they can bring Ariyaan’s family here. He’ll regain his soul and spend the last days away from the carnage and darkness on Earth.”
Ariyaan’s nostrils flare. “Is this the best you can offer?”
“It’s the only thing we can offer. How do I make you understand?” He sighs. “When the Trilokalypse arrives, all of us will cease to exist.” He gestures at the apsaras, who hold hands and swing in circles. “Dad wanted humans to know the end is coming and hence gifted them with the knowledge to predict natural disasters, to learn why this cycle failed. Humanity is self-centered, myopic. Of course it thought the Trilokalypse is an apocalypse—designed to erase just their realm. But when the fourteen worlds reboot, everything in them will perish, too.”
“How can a cycle that birthed Ariyaan fail?” My son was perfect, his eyes blue as the sky, his smile wide as that of apsaras but so much livelier. He was a wonderful son, a caring husband, and a better father. I will do anything to honor his last wish. Yet, I am powerless.
“The purpose of each cycle is to perfect creation, conservation, and destruction. Only that takes us closer to realizing the Brahman from whom everything emerges into existence. It’s like looking for cosmic virtues in the Ocean of Milk, but with no instrument to help churn.
“And so, the Brahman spins his wheel and starts an experiment with different constants. Causality emerges, imposing laws and faiths. But often, our communal karma skews the cycle to a sub-optimum instead of the maximum that the Brahman seeks. And so, the experiment fails.”
“So… the only way is to revive Ariyaan and let him live his last days here with his family.”
Narada lays a hand on Ariyaan’s shoulder. “I promise, a son to a father, that Dad’s Cosmic Report will sing Ariyaan’s praise. The Brahman will see it; he’ll be as proud of your son as I am of your fatherhood. If Ariyaan met his objective in his runtime, the Brahman shall impose his essence in the next cycle. Ariyaan shall return, he shall persist in one form or the other.”
It is still not what Ariyaan wanted, but he is gone, and I have done my best to secure my virtuous son’s immortality. “Thank you.” Tears well in Ariyaan’s eyes. “I wish them the happiest last days. They’ll make the best memories yet, and their deaths will be painless.”
“Indeed. But you forget, Maran. Ariyaan had a big regret in life. Shouldn’t we address it?”
I try to read Narada like he reads me, but I fail.
“You. You thought you’d be a negative influence on him and stayed away. Do you know how much he yearned for you? Not only when others bullied him for ‘being fatherless,’ but even when his mother couldn’t grasp his pain. He consoled her, lent her a shoulder, but his ache was a personal one. It made him sympathetic but lonely, too. It’s this ache that kept him from reaching the peak of Mount Kailash despite having a great karma. He has much to tell you, ask of you.”
Ariyaan weeps, hands clasping in prayer.
Narada smiles and clacks his wooden instrument. “He’ll be happy to see his father again.”