.I.
I was looking for a b r e a t h of life
For a little touch of heavenly light
But all the choirs in my head say, no
Breath of Life | Florence + the Machine
It was the sound of shuffling that caused Prerna to stir from her sleep. Her tired fourteen-year-old eyes blinked slowly before adjusting to the dark. As she threw her legs over her bed she heard a large thudding, as though someone had thrown a door shut in the house.
Strange, she mused to herself.
Closing her nightgown around herself to keep the cold out, Prerna grabbed the candle that lay on her bedside and lighting it up, walked out of her room.
As soon as she was in the corridor the banging noise got louder and through the thudding, she could make out muffled voices. Prerna stopped mid-step and hid behind the door of the home’s library.
Thundering footsteps got louder as they approached the corridor and Prerna quickly blew out her candle. The sharp smell of the burnt wax wafted through the air and Prerna bit her lip from crying. If the intruder was close enough he could smell the burnt wick, and he’d find her.
“Put the younger one in the carriage, I’ll look for the eldest.”
Prerna couldn't recognize the voice but she knew that she would not be able to forget it. The man carried a lilted accent and his voice was deep but broke repeatedly as if his own throat couldn’t carry the weight of his voice.
The younger one? They can’t mean-
“I had to knock her out, she was threatening to cry. There’s a bruise on her cheek but I’m sure it’ll fade soon,” came a gruff voice.
Shivi!
It was then that Prerna heard the swinging of a door and then her mother's strangled scream. Prerna sat frozen, completely immobile. Outside her door, she could hear footsteps running and then her mother's screams again. They were not agonized; instead, they were full of anger. She heard a terrifying growl from one of the men and then the resounding pound of a body hitting the ground.
“Tell me where she is and I’ll leave you alive,” the first man said hoarsely.
“Tell me where my daughter is and I’ll leave you alive.”
Her mother had always been brave, perhaps even foolishly so.
“Don’t test me wench, I’m more than tempted to rip your pretty little throat out like you just did with my friend.”
“You won’t find her. She’s not here. She left with her father. You’ll never have her, and once my husband returns he’ll find Shivi.”
Prerna felt her throat clog up and she couldn’t breathe. What was happening? Why were these men here?
Papa please come home right now, papa aap kahaan ho!
“Suit yourself b*tch.”
For a second it was quiet. Perhaps Prerna knew what was coming next; maybe she thought that if she held onto the silence as long as she could that it would never end. That the moment that would inevitably follow after would not happen.
But time was fickle and it waited for no one, not even frightened teenage girls who locked themselves away in the face of danger.
The second shattered with the piercing scream of pain that belonged to Prerna's mother. The scream last two cycles of breaths, in and out, in and out, and then there was the deafening sound of her mother’s body hitting the wooden floor.
Prerna had bit her hand so hard for fear of screaming, that she’d drawn blood. For a moment the man didn’t move and then with a grunt she heard him walk and drag something across the floor. Prerna waited until she knew he had left the house, the sound of her front door swinging in the night air was an indication of that. From outside she could hear the low neigh of a horse, and then a rustle of metal against metal. For a few minutes, she could still hear the noise, until slowly it disappeared, drawing away from her.
She stepped out from behind the door, her hand stinging slightly from where she’d bitten down on it. Her bare feet fell into something warm and sticky. Upon looking down she found her feet covered in blood. Her mother’s blood.
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A field away a man walked the long length of a dirt path into the bustling city. There were a few homes that had littered the grand fields, all a mile or so apart. They were adorned with the new lights, the newfound electricity that Kolkata had been adorned by. A few homes were still using the archaic fire torches to light their entrances and gates, and the sight seemed to him like blazing stars up close. His joyous whistle echoed into the night, the only sound until deeply interrupted by a bustling metal carriage.
He stopped, closing his eyes to the sound, and he could hear the distant muffled screams of a child, alongside the distinct laughter of two men. He tapped his cane, in sync with the rhythm his foot had found. He wondered if he should intervene, if the laws of the deity would penalize him in that moment for intervening with fate, but Rishabh had always quite liked a little bit of a drama.
So he tapped his cane, once, hard against the dirt path and the world stilled. The bustling sound in the distant had stopped, the blazes of nearby torches had ceased mid burn. The world had become his own still picture, time in the grip of the bottom of his sharp cane.
Rishabh sauntered over to the metal carriage, horses mid-leap in the air. The men who were seated in the front were covered in blood, it had been obvious that it had been dripping from them. Rishabh caught a drop in the air, on it's way from one of the men's elbows down to the carriage ground. He melted the drop of blood in his fingers, the smell pungent to his heightened senses.
The muffled crying he had heard before had been mixed with the sounds of the men. He peered past them and up at the large carriage that seemed depilated. Rounding the carriage, he came to the end of it, forcing open the doors with a snap of his fingers. The caged doors opened to a small girl, lying on the ground of the wagon, rope tied around her legs and her arms. There was a cloth stuff around her mouth, and her face was stained in tears. No blood was on her or near her, and Rishabh concluded that the blood hadn't belonged to her.
Interesting, he mused.
Suspending the girl mid air with just his gaze, his eyes followed the track of the carriage back to where she must have been abducted from. The path led down to a small road, havelis on either side, lit by the grandiose, ostentatious lights the firangis had littered the streets of Kolkata with. The moonlit the road well, and Rishabh turned his gaze back to the little girl suspended in midair.
She fell, coming to life instantly when she hit the ground. Her cries filled the deafening silence and her eyes looked terrified at the sight of Rishabh. He sighed, looking away from her and dialed her crying to a muted wail. Her mouth was open, sucking in air and crying it out, but he'd turned the volume off on her incessant cries. Rishabh bent to examine her and as he did so, the little girl fought to move away from him in her tied hold. He looked at the rope that dug into her skin and loosened the holds, just a slightest finger trick was all it took.
The young girl's eyes were stunned at her bindings coming undone on their own. She was terrified at the sight before her, the man before her. Rishabh placed his finger at his lips, lending her voice back to her. He'd permit her to speak if only her cries had dissolved.
"A-aap aap… k-kaun h-ho?" she questioned between her hiccup filled sobs.
The little girl edged away from him as her question hung in the air, and he stood up lending his hand to her. "Mujhe Maa ne bheja hai."
He knew that in this valley the humans had an inclination for the red adorned deity he'd met on a few occasions. She had always held softness on her tongue and a dormant fury in her eyes. Durga.
"M-maa?" the young girl's eyes widened and she stood abruptly, her hand falling into his. She was warm, feverish perhaps, he never knew the difference with human bodies.
"M-mujhe g-ghar jaana hai, P-priyu di au-aur maa bhi ghar p-pe hai!" she explained, her voice gaining new confidence.
Wordlessly he let the child guide him through the road that she'd been taken from, her fear had blinded her to the fact that the world had stopped in time, that she and the strange man were the only ones in motion. When she stopped, it was before a house that had been set ablaze. The girl's entire body tremored with shock.
"What's happening?" she whispered. She turned towards Rishabh, her eyes red with pain. "Maa andhar hai, P-priyu di bhi!"
The rogue men had set the house on fire after stealing the child, the rest of her family trapped inside. "Aag .. Aag kyun nahi jal rahi?"
Rishabh looked at her with a sharp smile. "Stay here," he commanded, and just like the rest of the world, she too stopped in time.
He left her there and walked closer to the cool fire of the burning home, and stumbled on something. Rishabh looked down and saw another young girl, splayed across the ground as if she'd fallen running out of the home. He tapped his foot against her arm, and she burst to life. The girl stood quickly, her breath coming out in uneven spurts and she caught sight of Rishabh immediately.
"Please, please help me! M-maa andhar hai aur khoon.. Itna khoon …aur Shivi woh Shivi ko-" she broke off, having looked past him in her furious words to see that her sister was standing by the gate, standing still.
"Shivi!" the girl's voice crackled into the air, like a clap of thunder. She ran towards her sister, clinging to the girl in trepidation. "Shivi, tum theek ho na? Tum theek ho!"
Rishabh watched as the teenager shook her sister, and then saw realization dawn on her that something was very wrong. "Shivi, tum bol kyun nahi rahi?! Shivi. Look at me. Kuch toh kaho!!"
The girl's furious eyes turned to Rishabh and she ran to him in desperation. "Shivi kuch bol kyun nahi rahi? Aur aap-" He watched her trauma stricken face look at the blaze behind her, the fire that hadn't roared since she'd woken up from off the ground. Terror stilled her bones, turning her rushing blood to ice in her veins. She took a faltering step back, and then another, her eyes landing on Rishabh with acute fear.
"Who are you? Wh-what have you done?" she questioned, her throat burning from bile. Prerna felt her head swim. The wold was quiet, so quiet, but in her own fear, she hadn't realized that the only sound in the air was the screech of her voice. She had been filling up the silence since she stood from the ground. And now the man with blackened eyes was looking at her in curiosity and she didn't know where to run.
"A-aap kya ho?" she asked again, and Rishabh felt amusement run through him.
This girl was older than the child he'd saved from the carriage. Priyu, the child had called her. She was trembling in fear now, but she was smarter than he'd give most humans credit for. After all, she'd asked him the correct question.
"What do you think I am?" he questioned her, his face expressionless.
Prerna closed her eyes, she had been crying out for Ganpati bapa, for someone, to find her and help her. She'd been screaming for a saviour, as she'd run out of the fire that had engulfed her home.
"Did Bapa send you?" she asked, her tone feverish with something he thought sounded a lot like hope.
Ah, the elephant-headed deity who'd once given Rishabh a laugh. She thought he was an angel, something sent from above to help her. Rishabh thought to indulge her.
"But your eyes," she said before he could get a word out, "your eyes look wrong."
Rishabh stilled and he tilted his head to the side. Prerna studied the stranger before her, the only thing in motion in a world that had stopped. He was lit by the frozen fire of her home, his face shadowed by the light behind him. He was dressed head to toe in a white kurta, a cane in his right hand. He was beautiful she thought belatedly, beautiful enough that it terrified her. But she had begged Bapa for someone to save them, and this man had. Shivi was behind her, the fire was frozen, and somehow she knew he'd done this.
"You have to help me, please! I don't care what you are. Please, please help me. My mother is in there, I don't know if she's dead but there was so much blood!"
Humans, Rishabh thought, were incredibly fickle creatures. The moment they saw something divine in anything wicked, they flocked to it with hopes of a new, false god. The girl had realized he'd stopped the world, and she was begging him to save her own now.
"You would worship a rock if you believed it would give you peace wouldn’t you?" he asked, his voice hard.
"If you save them … if you save them I promise to give you anything you ask for. But please, please," she begged, falling to her knees as sobs wracked her body. She clutched his legs and he pushed her away, kicking her back slightly. The girl crawled back, landing at his feet with her head hung low.
There was humility in this one, a sense of purpose and strong speared morality. She'd fallen to her knees to beg for the life of her family, not sparing a single thought to anything else.
"Get up," he ordered her, her tear-filled brown eyes examining him.
As she stood before him, the fire that had engulfed her home disappeared, the light of the blaze disappearing completely. The ferocious stranger stood before her now with his expression lit only by the moon, and she had to crane her neck to meet the man's eyes.
"What about the men who did this?" he questioned.
Prerna shook her head, "My family, please just save them."
She cared not for vengeance, or for the fates of the men that had nearly ended her family on this cold, unforgiving night. The child wanted only for her family to be safe.
"What can you offer me?" he asked, his voice slow and strong, and Prerna realized that she was surrounded by the smell of roses. The ground was barren and her garden hadn't grown roses in a year, but the scent still filled the air.
"Anything," she said with conviction, looking back at her sister, who was still but safe.
Rishabh nodded, amused by the child's antics. "Every year on this day, offer me a single grain of rice by that tree there." Prerna looked to where he was pointing, and it was the mango tree her and Shivi climbed relentlessly.
"The year you forget is the year I'll come to collect," he stated, crossing his arms.
"C-collect what?"
Rishabh leaned down, his face close to hers. "Your soul."
His large hand waved over her face, the scent of roses burning in her nose, and Prerna's eyes closed in compulsion, the world swimming out of reach.
"Di, diiii, aap uth kyun nahi rahi!! Maa bulaa rahi hai!"
Prerna opened her eyes and saw that it was morning, and Shivi was on her bed causing a storm. Light filled her room and Prerna sat up looking at the sight of her unburnt home. Shivi's hand landed on Prerna's arm and she gripped it hard.
"Shivi! Tum theek ho, tum bilkul theek ho," Prerna exclaimed, clutching to her young sister in relief.
"Aap theek ho? Mujhe kya hoga?" the child asked haughtily, laughing at her older sister's odd question.
"Maa! Maa kahan hai? Aur papa?"
"Kya hai Priyu? Kyun chilaa rahi ho!"
Prerna heard her mother's voice, and the world fell off it's axis. She was alive. Her long hair plaited behind her back, her saree spotless, and not a gash or bleeding wound anywhere on her. Prerna ran to her mother's safe arms and clung to her in desperation.
"Bura sapna dekha tha kya Priyu?" Veena consoled her sobbing daughter.
It must have been a bad dream, Prerna reasoned. A bad dream that had felt inexplicably real.
"There was no fire? No men in the home? Shivi you don't remember anything do you?" Prerna's questions spilled out of her, landing in a confusing mess in both her mother and sister's minds.
Perhaps it had been a dream or a foreboding warning. The day spun out of Prerna's control, and her frayed nerves found respite in the knowledge that neither had any idea of what had occurred, of just how much their world had changed.
_____________________
Rishabh had watched the family in silence throughout the day. He'd taken the child and reversed the events of the day, propelling her into a new future, one where her family was safe and sound, just like she'd asked. She had remembered, he had ensured she would be the only one to remember her debt to him, for what he'd done, for how he'd saved them all.
He knew the law holders would come for him soon. He had intervened in a human's fate, had changed the destiny of not only one but of the several she was attached to, leading to a new shift that had defied the deity's desires. Rishabh did not care. He had begged for years to be heard by the deity, had asked the hundreds that had taught him, why the humans suffered in degrees that did not seem just, to which the only answer ever was: it is the deity's will, we do not question, we abide.
He'd given up on the heaven that had prepared him for a noble cause, angered that the angels he had been surrounded by were so incredibly in love with the humans he found so flawed.
The girl had not asked it of him, but Rishabh had found the men that had nearly destroyed her home, and he'd ripped them apart with his bare hands. When he'd found them in the night, they had confessed to what they had done easily, afraid of the godlike stranger that had contorted their bodies in pain without so much as touching them. It was when they'd confessed to why they had stolen the child, what they would have done to her, that Rishabh's anger had turned to tumultuous rage. He'd hung them in the air and had pulled them apart, limb by limb, blood pooling like an ocean beneath their bodies.
When the men had finally stopped breathing, Rishabh had looked up to the heavens and exclaimed, "These are the humans you choose over your own divine creation?" His laughter had echoed for hours, condemning every deity that had heard his blasphemous cry.
The skies above him turned grey, and when Rishabh looked back down, he was surrounded in a circle by people dressed in the same serene shade of white as him. A being stepped forward, her hair short and her eyes hooded.
"Do you know the sin for which you are summoned?" she asked, her voice emotionless.
Rishabh smiled sardonically. The heavens parted, and the blinding light he once had found solace in, uprooted him completely.
_____________________
Prerna looked out her bedroom window and noticed that the clouds had darkened over the city, and then a flash of lightning charged the air. A storm had caught her, and she knew it would never let her go.
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A/N: Hello my lovely, lovely angels! So this story is inspired by and this chapter is dedicated to, the wonderful Najma that had asked me a while back if I could do a supernatural PreRish story. So here's to you Najma, thank you for believing in my writing wayy more than I do 😆 I have a very good idea how this story will unfold, and I'm quite excited for it. The characters will stay the same, yes Anurag will be here as well, but again won't be important. I wonder what y'all think about this introductory chapter because goodness knows it's vague as heck! Also if anyone caught it, yes this is set in the past because I have an ust for period/regency dramas and I'm watching a new one called Sanditon (based on Jane Austen's incomplete novel) and it's just PERFECT. So this story will feature a lot of that period type of feel (:
Edited by vena.cava. - 4 years ago.PM LIST.
If anyone is interested in being on a PM list for this story as well, please like this post and I'll add your name to this post here to keep track!
This is a SUPERNATURAL story. Oww WOW 😮
I am SO EXCITED TO READ FURTHER. I have read very less supernatural stuff and this has me HOOKED 😚😚🤨🤨😯😯😯 GIVE ME MORE I DEMAND OR ELSE I WILL COME FOR YOUR SOUL 😈
Rishabh isn't an angel 👼 he is a FALLEN ANGEL 
ANKIEEEEE you're gonna love this Rishabh, I know it for a fact 😆
🥳 YIPEEEEE ...Rishab representing Lucifer. The angel who rebelled against god. Loved it. Add me to the pm list Nor.
This one is gonna be a lot more tragic and a lot more dark, but still canon with respect to characterization. I'm so happy you're excited Nats!! I'll add you to the PM list!!
Edited by vena.cava. - 4 years agoI anyway LOVE rishabh but A fallen angel aahh de do mujhe yea rishabh 😍😍😍😍
Me too .. uff just imagine that smoldering gaze, that wicked, sinful smile ☺️
