She almost had it all. Almost. She was so very close and it was snatched most cruelly from her without warning; what had she done to deserve it?
Everything had been to perfect just moments before, she should have been careful but she was happy and that was all that mattered then. Now as the day's sun drew to a close, she felt as though it was the perfect description of her life. Pratap was dead. Dead? Of course, why else had her chunni been snatched off her head? Why else had her balis been ripped out of her ears?
She sat in a dull, empty room; no one but the baby in her stomach to speak to, to touch. No one knew about the baby and for the moment, she was glad that it too hadn't been taken from her. She shuddered when she thought what would happen once everyone had found out. It was a cruel sense of irony that the thing her parents had tried to prevent by delaying her gauna had occurred despite of it.
Why hadn't she waited? How had she thought her life was unfair then? This was unfair. She had done nothing wrong and yet she sat there afraid and alone, in her new role as a widow. How could Pratap do this to her? She felt angry at him and herself, why had she loved him so?
When the pain in her heart became unbearable, she lay on the cold stone ground and her arms curled around her stomach; protecting the baby inside of her. She couldn't lose it too. But just as she was lulled into sleep, she felt a sharp cramp at her side. She awoke but in her fear she ignored it and forced her eyes shut. It wasn't happening; not to her baby, not to the baby she had already seen in her dreams, not the baby that looked just like Pratap. But it was and she let out a piercing cry.
She couldn't fight the pain, it was too great. She was lying in a pool of blood; she could feel it and she turned pale. She sobbed and clutched desperately at her stomach but it was too late and eventually she lay shaking violently on the floor. She couldn't save it and now all that remained was the shattering realisation that the only thing she had left was gone.
Slowly, her pain turned to numbness and she gasped for breath because she could feel it happen. She struggled to keep her eyes open and gradually her vision blurred and she fell deeper and deeper into the dark abyss. And then she smiled, like this was release and suddenly, it all went black
