Prompt: Maybe something on Bhima and Hidimbi?? :D

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Men equated to food.

At least, that was what Hidimbi had known her entire life.

Her brother and the tribe had gained quite the infamy amongst both the humans and the rakshasas.

She herself had risen up in the ranks till it had started to become overtly evident that she commanded more power than the chief - her own brother.

"There is no place for emotions in the life of a Rakshasa, girl. Do well to remember it"

Some ancient rakshasi had told her many moons back, at the cusp of her awareness as a full-grown demoness. At that time, blood and gore and an insatiable hunger had not plagued her like an incurable disease.

The forest gods and their mystical creations used to make her curious.

To yearn for things not granted to their so-called wicked class of creatures.

But when the hunger had finally stricken, everything had been curtained beneath a mossy haze of red.

Hidimbi had accepted her lot in life.

To hunt for flesh and feed her tribe till she stumbles upon a powerful sage or a self-righteous arrogant kshatriya or another ambitious and stronger rakshasa.

But fate had had something else in store and had brought to her realm, five strapping hot blooded lads and their widowed mother.

And then she had seen him.

Bheema, the mighty giant, they called him.

With an impressive display of rock solid musculature, which gave the second Pandava a mountainous appearance and a pair of brilliant mahogany eyes that could tear through the densest of forests, Vrikodhara had roared with the power of ten thousand elephants as he had ripped apart her brother like the latter was just a stalk of a wilted flower.

She should've hated him.

She should've wanted to tear him limb from limb and devour his heart.

She had done neither.

She had instead wanted him.

The craving in her blackened heart had overflown like the rotten leaves of an autumn glade, and she had, for the first time in her life, surrendered herself on the altar of forbidden emotions.

"Blasphemous!"

The Gods would've cried aloud.

A man with a monster.

But her brothers in law had just laughed boisterous, rowdy in their good-natured ribbing, handsome eyes sparkling with affection for their gigantic brother and now their rather strange sister in law.

The dowager queen, a little more subdued, had smiled but the sombreity in her gaze bespoke of the helplessness which the former faced.

One could not take back a demoness for a daughter in law.

Hidimbi hadn't cared.

When her newly wedded husband had whispered in her ear, shattering the crimson barrier in front of her eyes.

"You are so beautiful..."

When Bheema's earthen brown eyes softened and the chiselled lines of his face glowed in delighted wonder, when his incredibly strong yet irrevocably tender fingers caressed the utterly unfeminine contours of her charcoal skin - Hidimbi had cared naught for the hypocrite society of men or the uptight principles of the Gods.

The emptiness inside her soulless body, which had nearly driven her mad for the entirety of her life, had finally been quenched.

After all, what had been that hunger but an insatiable need for love.