The air in this room was thick enough to chew on, a bizarre combination of dust and something else... something distinctly off. Rotten. Fishy. It tickled the back of my throat and made my nose wrinkle in involuntary disgust.

Despite the claustrophobic feel of being surrounded by stagnant air and decaying paper, it hadn't felt suffocating exactly, not until she'd walked in. The green of her saree was beautiful just like her eyes, but she was untidy, dirty, like she had been loitering the dust. It was possible. Anybody would turn dirty in this place.

"Lalita," I nudged, forcing a cheerfulness I wasn't quite feeling. The fishy smell seemed to intensify which was absolutely preposterous, I knew, yet undeniably my perception. "This place is... well, it's certainly something, isn't it?" I gestured vaguely around the room, hoping to deflect from the sudden, inexplicable onset of smell.

She blinked slowly, focusing on me with that strange, "Yes. Do you like it?"

"Last time I checked, I had no other way." I quipped, trying to inject some levity.

"How long have you been in Histoire?" My second question.

"I don't know. I woke up one day, more like Rayer woke me up and that was it." Lalita smiled.

"Did you meet anyone else like us?" It was my third question. I needed to know as much as I could. She was here before me, so she must have more idea than I did. Right?

"No." One word. A pause, then she spoke again. "Only Rayer. He says my time is nearly up and the reaper will find me soon."

I was shocked to see her being so smiley and happy about meeting her end. Honestly, I would have said a lot more if I knew her like that. But I simply dropped it to a casual conversation.

"Right. How have you been though? And why didn't I see you yesterday?"

Her brow furrowed slightly, as if my words were a puzzle she couldn't quite grasp. "I... I don't know," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Were you busy?" I probed again. Lalita remained indifferent, smiling, not smiling, being weird?

"I must be somewhere here. Are you not hungry?" Lalita scrunched, scratching the back of her head. "I want to eat something."

Eat? That was... unexpected. And honestly, a little unsettling given the circumstances - our vague meeting point, her strange demeanour, and the pervasive aroma of decomposing seafood. Plus, I didn't feel hungry yet. But maybe by the end I would be hungry too?

"Eat?" I repeated, trying to keep the befuddlement out of my voice. "Right now? Here?" I gestured again around the dilapidated space, hoping the absurdity of the suggestion would be clear.
"Lalita, there's... well, there's nothing to eat here. Unless you fancy some particularly vintage dust?"

Her gaze drifted around the room, settling on those rectangles, then sliding off again, unfocused. "Food," she repeated, a little louder this time, a hint of desperation creeping into her tone. "I just... need food."

Okay. Definitely weird. "Right, food," I said slowly, racking my brain. Was this some elaborate performance art piece? Lalita was known for those. But this felt... off. Too genuine in its strangeness. "Well, we can definitely get you food. After... after we find Rayer? Till then, why don't you tell me something about yourself?"

She looked at me again, those murky eyes searching mine, as if trying to decipher a language she'd once spoken fluently but now only vaguely recognized. "I don't know," she murmured. "I don't remember... going on."

Right. Another amnesiac like me. Was this for real? It sounded like the opening scene of a particularly surreal play. "You don't remember... anything?" I asked gently, leaning forward slightly. The fishy smell, I swear, was now directly under my nose. Was it me? Was I smelling of rotten fish? That was just... mortifying.

Lalita shook her head slowly, those dark curls swaying around her face. "Just... wanting to eat. And... feeling lost."

"Okay," I said, trying to sound reassuring, even though I was rapidly descending into a swirling vortex of confusion. "Lost we can work with. We can... find your story again. Piece it all back together. Like a... like a very complex jigsaw puzzle, but with... feelings." I winced internally at my own clumsy analogy.

Her reaction was sudden, sharp, and completely unexpected. Lalita recoiled as if I'd physically struck her. "No!" she exclaimed, her voice cracking. "No, I don't want to."

"Don't want to... find your story?" I blinked, genuinely taken aback. "But... why not? Wouldn't you want to remember? To know who you are?"

She wrapped her arms around herself, a strange, protective gesture. Her eyes, still murky, now held a flicker of something... fear? Panic? It was hard to tell. "Because," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the thrumming silence of the dusty room, "because the one who can make me... can break me too."

The words hung in the air, heavy and unsettling, punctuated by the persistent, sickeningly sweet-rotten fish smell. My brain screeched to a halt. The one who can make her can break her too? What in the name of Kafkaesque logic was that supposed to mean? It sounded like something ripped straight from a darkly metaphorical folk tale, not a casual afternoon conversation with my... allegedly amnesiac... fragment?

I stared at her, my witty rejoinders, my curious inquiries, all completely evaporated. The fish smell suddenly seemed... significant. Not just some random olfactory anomaly. It felt connected to her, to her words, to this suffocating atmosphere, to the whole bizarre, unsettling tableau.

"Lalita," I said slowly, carefully, each word feeling heavy and deliberate. "What... what do you mean by that?"

She just stared back at me, those clouded green eyes holding a depth of fear and something else... resignation? The rasp of her breath was the only sound in the room apart from the frantic thumping of my own suddenly racing heart.

The blood trickled into her eye, blurring the already distorted faces around her. Voices, sharp and accusatory, echoed in the bustling marketplace.

"Child stealer!" One man spat, his face red with indignation. "How could you even think of it?" Another woman shrieked, pointing a finger that trembled with rage.

All because of a kitten. A tiny, striped kitten, darting underfoot near a fruit stall. The mother, clutching her toddler close, had screamed when the woman had bent down, hand outstretched, not to the child, but to gently nudge the kitten away from the busy lane.

"She was going for my baby!" the mother wailed, tears welling in her eyes as quickly as the blood now flowed down the woman's forehead. "She was going to at him!"

Saroshi stood there, motionless. Her saree, a deep saffron, billowed in the wind, the aanchal snapping behind her.

It wasn't the wind of this world, though. Not entirely. It carried whispers, echoes of stories etched into the very stones beneath her feet. Stories of queens and concubines, of burning pyres and whispered vows. Stories she felt thrumming within her, a familiar ache she couldn't place.

The smell of something burning permeated the surroundings.

She stood in the middle of the village square, a figure both terrifying and strangely compelling against the backdrop of familiar terracotta houses and bustling market stalls abruptly silenced. The usual cacophony of vendors hawking their wares, children's laughter, and the gentle murmur of gossip had vanished, replaced by a heavy, oppressive quiet.

People peered at her.

It had started subtly, a shift in her demeanour, a restless energy that was initially dismissed as stress. She was always... different, yes. A dreamer, some whispered, too caught up in her own thoughts, her head filled with stories and philosophies gleaned from old texts and whispered legends. But there was a gentleness to her difference, a quiet thoughtfulness that, while sometimes perplexing, was never threatening. Until now.

Now, the gentleness was gone, replaced by a raw, untamed power that seemed to radiate from her very core. Her voice, once soft and melodious, now resonated with a strange, unsettling authority. It boomed across the square, each word striking the villagers like a physical blow.

"You fear me, my children," she declared, her fiery gaze sweeping across the unseen faces hidden within the houses. "You cower like pups before a storm. But look at me. Look! Do you see destruction? Do you see malice?"

Her hands, usually skilled at intricate embroidery or soothing touch, were now outstretched, palms open in a gesture that was meant to be benevolent but came across as demanding, imperious.

"I am not here to end you," she continued, her voice softening slightly, a deceptive gentleness that did little to assuage the terror in their hearts. "Why would I? You are my child, the threads of my grand design. I am here to... to weave you into something magnificent."

A young mother, clutching her infant tightly to her chest, dared to peek out from behind her husband. She saw Saroshi's eyes - luminous, intense - and felt a chill seep into her bones despite the scorching heat. There was something undeniably wrong there, a disconnect between the words of comfort and the terrifying energy that pulsed around her.

"I see the threads tangled, frayed, knotted in ways that bring only suffering," the woman lamented.
"Poverty, disease, heartbreak... such needless pain. I can untangle them, you see. I can re-weave your fates, each one, into patterns of joy, of prosperity, of everlasting peace."

She stepped forward, and involuntarily, those watching drew back further into the shadows of their homes. Her movement was fluid, almost predatory, despite her words of benign intention. She circled slowly in the square like a caged tigress, her eyes never still, constantly searching, judging, as if reading invisible scripts written on the very fabric of their lives.

"I will be the mother you never had," she announced. "A benevolent, all-seeing mother. I will nurture you, guide you, protect you from the shadows that lurk unseen. I will shape your destinies with love, with wisdom, with... with fire!"

The last word was spat out, not with anger, but with a strange exhilaration, a thrill that sent shivers down the spines of her unseen audience. 'Fire.' They saw it in her eyes, a consuming, untamed fire that promised not warmth and light, but destruction and obliteration.

An old man, the village elder, his face lined with the wisdom and weariness of years, whispered to his grandson, huddled beside him, "She speaks of motherhood, but her eyes hold the madness of Kali in the cremation grounds."

He had seen such things in his long life, aberrations, moments when the delicate balance of the world tilted, and something primal, untamed, broke through. He recognized the signs - the feverish intensity, the grandiose pronouncements, the terrifying conviction in her own delusion.

Saroshi stopped her pacing, her head tilted upwards as if listening to voices only she could hear. A strange smile stretched her lips, a smile that held no warmth, no kindness, only a chilling detachment.

"You do not understand," she sighed, not with sadness, but with a chilling indifference. "You cling to your petty lives, your small joys and sorrows, unaware of the grand tapestry unfolding around you. You fear me because you fear change, you fear the shedding of the old, the embrace of the new."

She spread her arms wide again, encompassing the entire village, the surrounding fields, the distant hills. "I will not end you," she declared, her voice now flat, devoid of emotion, almost robotic. "No. That is not my role. My role is... to watch. To observe. To witness."

A crow cawed loudly from the banyan tree, breaking the eerie silence. The woman's burning gaze flicked towards it, then back to the unseen faces. "I will sit here," she said, sinking down onto the dusty ground in the middle of the square, crossing her legs with an unsettling languor. "I will sit and watch."

Her eyes, still blazing with that unnatural fire, fixed on a distant point beyond the village, as if she could see something they could not, some impending doom, some preordained conclusion. "I will watch as your threads unravel, as your patterns crumble. Not by my hand. No. By your own. By the choices you make, the paths you tread, the fates you blindly stumble towards."

I woke up, startled, shocked and sweaty. What did I just dream of? When did I sleep?

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. What in God's name had I been dreaming? Jagged images of my angry self, tastes of ash and fear still prickled my tongue. Had I even slept? My head throbbed, a dull, insistent drumbeat against the silence of the room.

The darkness of the dream receded, replaced by the soft, filtered light of those rectangles seeping through my eyes. The smell of fire was gone, replaced by the faint, familiar scent of rotten fish. The heat faded, leaving a clammy chill in its wake. Reality, blessedly, was mundane, safe, and... and then I saw her.

Lalita.

She was sitting near my feet.

Just sitting. Not moving. Not saying anything.

And she was staring at me.