Stories By Chaya

Content Warning: Suicide.

Please note, while inspired by India and Hindu mythology, all of the following places are fictious.

Durga breathed in the salt and fish scented symphony, expanding endlessly before her. The tide slapped the grainy, raw sand with a foaming strength that made the air taste wet. Just a few paces from the beating shore, a line of palm, banana, and coconut trees fought for space against a sheer, rocky cliff. Red dirt versus black stone. A few canoe-like boats with chipping paint and handwoven nets were moored near a crumbling stone dock. The Rakshasa Beach was a place to fish or walk. It was not a place where the residents of the Rakshasi village swam.

Durga, being one of those residents, intimately knew how suctioning the ocean’s grip was. Still, she stepped towards the shoreline. She slipped off her sandals and let the grains slither between her toes. The sand was warm at first, but as she neared the water the ground grew harder and colder—the sun’s rays were losing to the chilly water. When the first wave hit her toes, she shivered, but she kept walking. She was not here to swim. She was here to keep walking.

By the time the freezing waves had crawled to her hips, salty water was dripping down her face as well, in the form of streaking tears. As the droplets hit her lips, she tasted the acrid smoke that was awaiting her elsewhere. Where her family and betrothed would be now, encircling the fire at which her marriage would have been officiated. The red, bridal sari she wore drifted aimlessly in the impatient ocean, looking like swirls of sparkling blood. Of beautiful pain. The heavy, gold chains around her neck and ankles worked with the sand to tug her down. When the last strands of her long black hair slipped beneath the water’s surface, she felt the uncomfortable press of burning water on her lungs.

She did not hate her parents for arranging the marriage she’d snuck away from. She did not hate her betrothed for assuming she’d become a housewife at his family’s home and bear him plentiful, beautiful children. She’d always known this was how her life would turn out. She’d tried to fight it. She’d studied engineering abroad. She’d even held a job for a while. She had some money saved up which she could call purely her own. But it would be her father’s money which went towards her dowry. There were still dowries in her hometown. The ironic thing was money didn’t seem to matter when it came to asserting her own independence. No matter how fat her bank account got, it could never outweigh her familial duties. No matter how far she’d flown in aircrafts her parents had never entered, she’d always end up back in Rakshasi.

She resolved herself to this end, because she would rather be reborn as a bug in a distant future than live another second in the reality that faced her. If there was one thing she felt she was leaving behind, it would be her younger sister. Her sweet sister who would bow to anyone’s wishes. The ideal, Rakshasi woman. Perfect in her passivity and beauty. Perfect for the role of prey.

I’ll send a feather to you, my dear Lalitha, Durga thought, as the darkness of the ocean overcame her and she continued to walk deeper into its chilling hold.

***

Durga’s body was found by the next morning’s batch of fishermen. At her funeral, there was a crowd of white-clothed mourners whose cries burned like the fire which turned her body to ash. The ocean of white attire bled into the grey smoke of her remains, dissipating into the sky, higher than her wedding fire’s smoke must have risen. For twelve days after her death, Durga’s family and friends did nothing but grieve, according to their custom. Only her betrothed, whose family was already in talks with a new potential match, moved on with his life. But between her true loved ones—her parents, sister, and closest friends—so many tears fell that Durga wondered whether the underworld would flood. Though she felt horrible for the tragedy she put her family through, she did not regret her decision. No amount of guilt or fear for her next life could overshadow the hopeless she had clearly felt when she was alive.

On the thirteenth day after her death, Durga’s family followed the standard ritual of preparing a grand feast for her passage. She stepped into the skin of a crow and bristled her feathers, ready to take flight to the mortal realm for one, last time in this consciousness. Though she was returning to the place she’d called home, the world felt foreign as she flapped above it. She felt different inhabiting reality, in the best way. She felt the freest she ever had as she soared through the sky. She flew through dampening clouds and the sun pressed hotly on her black wings, reminding her how warm the world could be. The tempting brushes of life unnerved her enough that she dived into a jungle, hoping the shade could protect her from the glorious light of the living world. She knew what she was feeling was a false temptation—a freedom she could have never had in her human body. She flew the rest of the way under the thick tropical canopy. Eventually, she landed on a branch in her parent’s garden, where her ceremony was taking place.

One by one, people who shared her blood, her street, and her memories filed up to a bless the sacrifice which would fuel the final stage of her journey. Piled onto a lusciously green banana leaf was a spread of yogurt rice, spiced pickle, and a curry made with her favorite vegetable. Despite having studied abroad and worked so much, she didn’t know the name of the vegetable. Maybe it was a capsicum? She just knew that it was often served at the Hindu temple her family prayed at so she called it, “The temple veggie.”

Her stomach rumbled and drool accumulated in her mouth—beak. She wasn’t sure if her reactions were physical or mental. It was an interesting question that would have captured her attention at any other time. But now, her focus was on her younger sister who was kneeling in front of her sacrificial meal. Durga hopped down to a lower branch so she could hear Lalitha’s prayer.

“Why? Why did you leave us? Leave me? I need you. I miss you. But I wish you find peace, nonetheless. If it means your soul can be reborn into our world, then I want nothing to hold you back here. I want you to move on. I love you, Durga.” Lalitha took a pinch of uncooked rice, red holy powder, and flower petals and sprinkled them on the banana leaf plate. She bowed and then backed away into the shaking arms of their parents.

Durga wasn’t sure if crows could cry, but she certainly felt as though her soul was sobbing. For the first time, she felt the semblance of regret. It tugged at her tiny crow heart, ruffled her feathers, and forced her into flight. She circled the food again and again, unable to stop thinking, You asked me to move on, but how can I now that I know how much you’re hurt? And how much must you love me to still wish me the best despite my selfish actions?

However, the afterlife was calling her. She could feel it in her frail bones. So, after the last of her grievers blessed her meal, she and a flock of crows swooped down to eat from the banana leaf. As she was leaving the mortal world behind, she shook loose a feather, as she had originally planned, and watched it land in the hands of her sister.

“If you need me, I’ll be back quicker than that feather could fall,” Durga said. Though the words had to have come out in caw and there was entire murder of crows around her, Lalitha met Durga’s eyes in that exact same moment.

Unable to withstand the pull to the underworld, Durga had no choice but to break their locked gaze first. She flew amongst the crows until she could not tell the blackness of their feathers from the blackness of her surroundings. Somehow, her body knew where to go, even as she felt less and less of her body. After some inconceivable time had passed, she couldn’t tell if she was a crow or a human or anything at all.

***

For a while, darkness was how things were. Durga, with whatever consciousness she could muster, felt as though something was wrong. She wasn’t sure what she expected out of the reincarnation process, but an endless and timeless blackness certainly wasn’t it. She had nothing better to do than reminisce as she floated. Her mind drifted to when she had returned home from studying abroad. Her family had welcomed her with a feast and she ruled the conversation, filling them in with everything she’d done abroad, while they stared at her mutely.

“And then my professor—the one who I mentioned is one of the forerunners in electric car developments—said that I have knack for the topic and she said that in a year she’ll be leading a project at Capital Motors and if I reached out to her for a job then, she’d put my application at the top of her pile!”

Durga looked around, her cheeks were growing numb from all the talking and smiling she’d been doing. She’d been talking so excitedly to drown out an ugly unease that kept rising within her—she couldn’t ignore how silent her parents were. Even Lalitha was avoiding her eyes. She knew a hammer was about to drop but she hoped, if she prolonged it enough, her family would grow tired of holding it poised. She had no such luck.

“Durga, my sweet baby,” her mother, Parvati, said. “We’ve found a good match for you.”

There it was. There it was. She’d known. She’d always known. But still she shouted, “Didn’t you listen to anything I said? I graduated magna cum laude, do you people even know what that means? I didn’t ask you for anything for the last six years. I worked and took classes and worked some more.”

“It’s your duty to get married, dear,” Parvati said.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Durga shot at her father.

He silently picked at his food.

“This is unbelievable,” Durga leaped to her feet, knocking a glass of water onto the meal her mother had painstakingly prepared. She barely noticed the water dripping from her hands as she flung her arms and continued, “This is sexist and misogynistic and disgusting and pathetic. What are we? Some villagers from the 1800s?”

“That’s enough, Durga.” Parvati stood up too. “You will meet him tomorrow and then next weekend we have an appointment with the priest and astrologer to confirm the match and choose an auspicious date for the wedding. This was what I did when I was your age—when I was younger than you, actually. We let you have your way for this long. Your sister will be married and so will you. Who knows, you could be a working mother too. There have certainly been some of those.”

Yes, there had. But in her small town those women were looked down upon for neglecting their children. The assumption would be that her husband couldn’t provide enough and that she needed to work too. Even before meeting him, Durga was sure he wouldn’t take such a social insult.

“Mama, I finished my homework and dinner. I’m going to see my friend,” Lalitha said. Even the way she got to her feet was quiet and weak. In that moment, Durga loathed her.

“Are you kidding me? We’re being oppressed and disrespected and you’re going to go play with a friend now? You’re all a bunch of fucking savages.” As if her words weren’t harsh enough, she swung her arm and sent her plate and water glass crashing off the dining table. She didn’t mean to hurt anyone, she just wanted to exert some sort of power. Something. Anything. Because she knew at this moment that nothing she said, not the worst profanity or insults, could change her situation.

After, her sister and father had left, she gritted her teeth and helped her mom pick up the broken glass. She retired to her room and met her fiancé the next day. They took a walk, as most young couples do, along Rakshasa Beach and as he told her about his vision for “their” future and gifted her a golden bracelet, she felt as though he was clipping on the first of many chains. They met the priest and astrologer, two old men who looked only at her fiancé and father when they spoke. They claimed that this match was indeed ideal and chose the date for her marriage. No one bothered to ask if she was free on that day.

It must have been around that time, Durga thought, as her soul lay waiting in the dark abyss of the afterlife, that I decided to die.

***

The endless and timeless limbo that Durga lay in broke, in a singular instant. Without a moment to gain her bearings, Durga felt as though a fist had enclosed a corporeal version of her, and it was crushing her. Her spine was splintering. And, somehow, she found it in herself to open her eyes, whatever that meant for someone who didn’t have eyes, and saw that she was back on Rakshasa Beach.

She looked around, dizzily, at the familiar sheer cliff, unforgiving waves, and kilometers of sand, painted red by the sun setting at the ocean’s horizon. Then two young women entered her sight, and she immediately forgot her confusion and disorientation. One of the women was Lalitha. Lalitha, Lalitha, her baby sister! The other, Durga numbly recognized, was Lalitha’s best friend.

“I am meeting my fiancé tomorrow,” Lalitha said. Her dark skin had more lines than the last time Durga had seen her. Her glossy black hair was frizzier. Durga guessed that she must have been waiting in the darkness for years, because Lalitha had clearly finished school and was about to be married off.

Durga did not fear for Lalitha. Her sister was well suited to the role she’d need to play. She could be the submissive wife who cooked and cleaned and cared for children. She was weak and meek—the kind of person who would shift with the tides, rather than walk into them. So, Durga was taken completely by surprise by Lalitha’s next words.

“Should I follow in my sister’s footsteps?” Lalitha asked, gripping her friend’s hand. “Would you join me?”

“I would,” her friend answered.

“But I can’t,” Lalitha turned away from the other girl and hugged herself.

The sun had finished setting. Though it was nighttime and darkness embraced the women, they were at a southern shore. The weather had to be chokingly warm still. Durga knew Lalitha wasn’t feeling cold. She was hurting. And Durga couldn’t fathom why. Hadn’t Lalitha seen her own marriage coming?

“I want to,” Lalitha said. She stared into the beating shore and Durga could just make out the feather she’d left behind, illuminated by the moonlight, being crushed in Lalitha’s hand. “I want to, but I’m afraid it will kill my parents to lose me too. I cannot do that to them.”

“If that’s your decision,” the friend said, “I’ll support that too.”

Lalitha turned to her friend. Her large eyes shimmered like glossy steel. Durga had never known her sister to have such strength in her eyes. And then Lalitha grabbed her friend’s shoulders and kissed her. The kiss was not a timid one. The two girls clearly knew how to meld into each other’s arms, as if they’d found their other half. Lalitha dropped the feather she was holding. It floated to the sand, painfully slowly, while Durga remained rooted in her bodiless consciousness.

She remembered her promise, that she’d return to Lalitha faster than the feather could fall, if she truly needed her. Her sister clearly needed her now. But as the feather left her sister’s grip, Durga could do nothing but realize. Realize that every time her sister had run away from confrontations to spend time with her friend, she’d been coming to see her true love. Lalitha had been fighting their oppression in her own, intelligent way. But what now? How would their parents react? There would be no happy ending for her sister—no, Durga had never expected her sister to have a happy ending. But she’d hoped her sister would feel content, at least, as their mother had. Now, she feared Lalitha would be miserable for the rest of her life. How had she not realized this before? How had she left her sister behind in this state? What could she do now?

“Would you like to walk the earth again?” A figure shimmered into existence before her.

Durga was named after one of the avatars of, arguably, the strongest goddess. Because of her name, she’d taken a specific interest in the goddess Durga’s many forms. Her mother and sister, Parvati and Lalitha, were also named after avatars of the same goddess. Where “Parvati” and “Lalitha” represented more passive forms that the goddess could take—embodying motherhood and unity, respectively—“Durga” represented the version of the goddess in her most balanced state, the combination of all of her other avatars.

Standing before Durga the ghost now, was the fiercest of these avatars. Her skin was the dark blue of midnight and her hair was a wild and long mane, as black as the limbo in which Durga had been held for years. Her tongue was long and bright red as it swished out of her mouth. She had ten arms, five on either side, and each held an item of war, ranging from fire to a bow to a shield. One of her swords was still dripping with what looked like blood, as though she’d just arrived from a killing. True to her nickname, “The Destroyer of All Evil,” she wore a necklace of severed demon heads, a skirt of arms, and jewelry made of stained gold. Though her bangles and bracelets looked reminiscent of what Durga had worn for her wedding, they looked nothing like chains on the goddess.

“Kali,” Durga whispered in recognition and reverence. Kali the Liberator. The Goddess of War and Justice. The Goddess of Freedom.

“Would you like to walk the earth again?” the goddess asked once more. Her voice sounded fiercer than the beach’s thrashing waves.

“I—I can do that?” Despite all she’d studied and seen in her life, Durga could think of nothing better to say before the great and terrifying presence.

“I’ve been watching you, my namesake. I hid you from Yama, who rules the underworld, for this exact moment. I see a fire in you, child. Will you follow your flame? You have yet to complete your karmic duty on earth.”

Durga felt as though she was drenched by the ocean’s cold embrace again. She felt absurdly small and weak in front of the goddess. Her fears and sadness felt negligible in the face of such power. How many wars and how much evil had Kali destroyed throughout time? Yet, Durga had run away from just one injustice. She’d left the evil alive in her home, and now it threatened to take her sister too. With that thought, she steeled her resolve.

“Yes, please.”

“Good.” Kali nodded approvingly. She swept her scimitar at the nearest tree and it crashed towards her feet. The cut flew wide enough that some of the rocky cliff crumbled as well. She gathered the red dirt, black stone, and brown bark. She set them aflame with the fire in one of her hands and added a little of her own blood to the mixture. From her flaming creation, she drew out a limp body.

“Is that…me?” Durga asked, recognizing the wedding sari—red as the goddess’ blood—and the contours of the face.

“I cannot give you your true body, for it has been burned by your loved ones already. But the essence of you resides here, in your hometown, and so I have created a temporary skin for you to inhabit. When you wear this skin, only those who share your blood will be able to see you. You will be more a specter than a human, but as soon as you step into the mortal realm, Yama will be alerted to your presence. You have until dawn before Yama finds you. You have until dawn to convince your sister to die by her own hand. Then, and only then, you will be able to inhabit her body and live again, in her place. Do you understand?”

“Is that the only way?” A tremor rung through Durga’s voice. “Lalitha must die?”

“There is reason to be angry in this world. There is too much imbalance to feel otherwise.”

Durga supposed the goddess had deigned her with more attention and explanation than most people would ever receive. She did not press for a better answer and, instead, forced her consciousness to enter the body. As the fabricated skin fell into place around her, she briefly recalled one time, in a winter abroad, when she wore her gloves on the wrong hands. An ill-fitting but familiar weight filled her. She opened her eyes—real, human eyes—and looked around. Though she could see the grains of the Rakshasa Beach sand beneath her bare feet, they did not shift with her steps. She couldn’t feel them. Just as she couldn’t feel the night’s breezes or smell the salty, fishy air. Still, she was walking. She had a body.

“It worked!” Durga looked around, but the goddess was nowhere to be seen. While she’d been distracted by Kali’s presence, Lalitha and her friend had walked on. She could see the shaded outlines of them parting ways at the beach’s entrance.

I’ve only got a few hours, Durga thought, I should hurry.

She followed her sister, away from the beach and towards their home. Every step felt dizzying in this strange body. She seemed to move faster and felt like she weighed less, though the gold jewelry that she’d died in still clung to her, as though they’d blended into her skin.

By the time Lalitha had almost reached their home, Durga still hadn’t confronted her. She knew she needed to hurry, but how could she do this? Was she supposed to just walk into Lalitha’s bedroom and say, “Hi, dear sister, surprise! I’m back! Want to die?” That certainly wouldn’t bode well. She feared she’d kill her sister from pure shock.

As she was mulling over how to approach the situation, she absentmindedly stuck to the shadows of the path home while keeping an eye on Lalitha. She noticed when her sister suddenly stopped, a couple minutes away from their house, under a thin and tall streetlamp.

Lalitha patted herself down in a panic. She looked around in a rush. It was only after Lalitha took a step back towards the beach that Durga realized she had lost the crow feather. Knowing that Kali had probably destroyed the feather and that Lalitha would not be able to find it at the beach, she stepped forward into the light to save her sister the futile trip back.

Lalitha froze and stared.

It occurred to Durga that heading back to the beach probably would’ve been the smarter move. After all, she did need to convince Lalitha to die and that was much harder to do this far from the ocean and any other killing substance.

Oh well, she thought, I still have most of the night.

“Hello, dear sister,” she said aloud, “surprise—”

“Durga!” Lalitha rushed into her arms and squeezed her as tight as she’d squeezed the feather.

“Lalitha, Lalitha,” Durga murmured into her sister’s thick, curly hair, wishing with all her heart that she could feel her sister’s embrace.

They held each other for a long time in the night, unmoving while mosquitos buzzed and the streetlamps flickered. They sobbed in each other’s arms and then they laughed at the absurdity of their situation. When Lalitha asked for Durga’s story, she deflected the questions. What she truly wanted to hear was about Lalitha.

“I’ve realized that I never knew you at all,” she said. “I was so focused on myself and my dreams. I left to a different country. I never bothered to ask you about your life. Tell me.”

There must have been something knowing her eyes, or maybe it was just the magic of appearing after death, but Lalitha told her everything. She explained how she had met the love of her life—the friend from the beach. How she had felt like she’d been struck by lightning and all those other cheesy lines that they’d heard in the films they used to love watching together. But she’d been utterly terrified because the source of the electric connection had been another girl. She knew how their parents were, from all the fights she’d witnessed between them and Durga, and she knew her love wouldn’t be accepted. So, as much she hated lying and sneaking around, that was how she’d lived for years.

Durga was overcome with grief. How much had Lalitha loved the other woman to have comprised her own kind and honest morals?

“And now I don’t know what to do.” Lalitha dug her face into Durga’s bosom. “I have to meet the fiancé that Mom and Dad selected tomorrow. I hate it. I hate it!”

“There is…a way.” Durga coughed awkwardly. Maybe some of the smoke from Kali’s fire remained her body. “There is a way to be freer.”

Lalitha turned her glittering eyes up as Durga told her about the freedom of death. About how it had felt to fly above the world as a crow. To be unleashed and purely her own self—without the earthly duties of family and marriage and society crushing her down.

“Show me how to do it,” Lalitha said.

With that, the two walked hand in hand back to Rakshasa Beach. As if the shore could sense their silent resolve, the waves beat loud and strong. They rose higher than they had when Durga gave herself over to them. Sprays of salty water hit the sisters before their toes touched soaked region of the beach’s sand. The night grew darker, approaching the crux before dawn, but the pit in Durga’s stomach did not come from a fear of running out of time. Still, she led Lalitha towards the ocean.

“Stop!”

Durga whipped her head around to find Parvati scrambling towards them. Never in her life had she ever seen her mother run so wildly. She was tripping over sand and seashells. She kicked off her sandals. Gray had begun leaking into her black hair in the years Durga had been gone and her braid was falling apart. There were deep circles and wrinkles around her eyes that Durga did not recognize.

When Parvati fell, she crawled until she could get back on her feet. Again and again, her forward momentum did not stop until she’d reached Lalitha and grabbed her.

“Stop!” she screamed. It was only after she was sure that Lalitha could not escape her grasp that she turned to see her eldest daughter. “You…Durga?”

“Mama. I’m sorry,” Durga said. “I was too afraid to live a life like yours. I wanted to be free.” Durga was sure that if she’d had blood, it would’ve risen to her cheeks. She was ashamed of how weak her reasoning sounded, once all the anger and harshness had been stripped away. She braced herself for a slap or a lecture. Maybe her mother would spit at her. That was probably what she deserved for all she’d put their family through.

Parvati just stared at her. Horror, hope, and a great sadness widened her eyes.

“Is this,” Parvati whispered, tilting her head back to gaze at the turning sky, “the only way you thought you could be free?”

“I’m sorry,” Durga murmured. She didn’t know what else to say.

A heavy, harsh gust blew onto the three women, shifting their similar curls just as surely as it shifted the ocean’s surface. Yama, the ruler of the underworld, had found Durga, she was sure. But the wind calmed for a moment. As Parvati’s hair settled from her face, Durga saw tears streaming down her mother’s cheeks.

“And, you, Lalitha?” Parvati asked, her voice hoarse. “Are you too trying to find freedom?”

“Mom, I’m in love with a woman,” Lalitha whispered.

At that, Parvati’s grip on Lalitha slackened. She stumbled back, tripping over her own shawl. She fell onto her knees. Her hands were limp at her sides, and then she closed her fists, drawing lines in the wet sand.

“I did it again, didn’t I?” she asked, cocking her head at the ocean. Her eyes far gone. “I pushed another daughter towards death.”

“No!” Lalitha said. “It was never your fault!”

Durga wanted to say the same, but she couldn’t form the words.

“It was my fault,” her mother insisted. “I was the one forcing you…forcing you both to live as I have.”

Durga and Lalitha shared a cautious look. They knelt before their mother, their backs straight. Before they could speak, Parvati grabbed their arms and yanked them into her embrace. For all the fake skin and flesh that Durga wore, she felt…warm. She didn’t realize how much she’d needed this; her mother’s acceptance, forgiveness, and love.

“Durga, my daughter, I am sorry for making you feel so alone, and so desperate. Lalitha, my daughter, I will do better. I promise. To be honest, I don’t understand what you mean. That you love another woman. But I promise I’ll try. I’ll start by cancelling your match meeting tomorrow. So please, my loves, don’t leave.”

Durga could not believe what she was hearing. Her mother was the last person she would have expected to be so open-minded. She had never thought people could change this drastically. As if she could hear her thoughts, Parvati locked onto Durga’s gaze and tightened her grip around her daughters.

“There is reason to be loving in this world,” Parvati said. “There is too much imbalance to feel otherwise.”

As the first rays of dawn threatened to pierce the night sky, Durga realized that the imbalance began within each self. There was reason to be angry and reason to be loving too. Living had been the way to find the balance within herself, within family, and within society as well. But she’d lost her chance, in this life at least. She knew what she had to do next. Before Yama and the underworld could pull her away, she stood of her own volition and she smiled, one last time, at her mother and sister.

“Thank you, both of you,” Durga said. “I can see now that you will be fine. No, you will thrive. But my time, to grow and age, has passed. I don’t belong on this earth anymore.”

Parvati and Lalitha cried then, wholly, as only living humans could. Durga squeezed their hands.

“Goodbye. I love you.”

She felt her body shrink. Her skin dissipated into wood, rock, dirt, and smoke. As the ashes blended with her mind and what was left of her soul, she re-entered the blackness of Kali’s realm. Then the darkness lifted, revealing a soft rainbow of light.

The goddess reappeared before her, but now she took the form of Durga—the balance of all her avatars—rather than Kali. Her skin was a bronze gold instead of midnight blue. She had eight arms in this form and though she continued to hold a few weapons of war, she held items of peace as well—such as a lotus flower and a conch. She smiled kindly at Durga the ghost.

“How was your trip?”

“I think you want me to regret killing myself. And I do. I hate that I abandoned by family. But at the same time, I wonder if my mother would’ve been so understanding if my death hadn’t shaken her first?”

“It was not your death which changed her, but your bare and honest reason.”

Durga realized then, far too late, that before she’d taken her life, she’d never tried calmly explaining her feelings to her family. She’d only shouted at them and then given up on them. A sob echoed through her consciousness as she understood how little she knew of the world. How her sister had hidden such strength beneath her meek smile. How her mother was kind and capable of listening, when Durga said what she meant, rather than spewed hurtful words. It was freeing to know how much there was to know—to change her own mind, which she had thought was liberal and modern already, to be more open to the world. The sensation was more freeing than flying had been. “Let me go back.”

“No,” Durga the goddess said. “But I will convince Yama to let you carry a small piece of this consciousness into your next life. A feather, so to speak, from the wings this journey has left you with. In your next life, you will be part of movement bigger than yourself. For though you have found a balance within yourself, the reasons for suicide will continue to cycle throughout time until those reasons are brought to light. Your next challenge will be channeling your flame to shine light on the true reasons of suffering before they can claim more lives. In doing so, you will be able to bring others into the sweet serenity of balance and freedom too.”

“I will,” Durga the ghost said. And so she passed on.