When the sun dies

She watched the sun drown into the lake along with her hopes, and she could only wish it would rise again, tomorrow. Whenever tomorrow came, that is.
Behind the scrawny bushes, her father’s weak cattle grazed on dying grass. Tomorrow, there would be one less cattle.
They were coming tomorrow.
She stood up from the stony ground, her colored glass bangles clinking, her decorated braid swinging furiously, as she hurriedly wiped the dirt off her shirt. The light danced on the pieces of mirror sewn on to her shirt.
Somewhere in the distance a lonely dog howled as the last rays of the sunlight dissolved into the murky water. She wrapped her mother’s shawl tighter around her body as the breeze turned cooler with the descending night. There was a hole in that shawl, a big hole that kept getting bigger. She did not mend it, she didn’t know how to.
The animals with their bony forms, and weary eyes, stood by their young “herderess”, as she stared with her big black eyes, into a horizon that she could not see. A single little tear escaped her eye, and she wiped it off with the back of her hand. As she did so, she smelled the much too familiar smell of the henna on her hands, and she hated it…..
Near the Keenjhar lake, was a row of mud and brick houses, and in one of them sat Rukhsana, with a piece of mirror in her hand.
She could see the deep set wrinkles under her eyes, like the cracked land in a drought. Her hair that had once been as lustrous as her daughter’s was now silver and white, and painfully thin. Twenty years ago, she could call herself beautiful, now she was ashes of a fire that once warmed all. But there was something else that troubled her. And each time that she ignored it as a devil’s call, it hit her back with a greater force. She did not understand why, but as much as she waited for tomorrow, she also wished it that it would never come.
Her eyes wandered in her one room house, not that there was much space to wander. And a part of her assured her again, she was just giving her child a better future. She applauded herself for being a good liar.
Thirty years ago her mother had been just like her, and she just like her own daughter had been glowing and young at the ripe old age of sixteen….the line of her thoughts was broken by the soft knock on the wooden door.
She watched her daughter enter quietly, her head low, her eyes even lower.
“Rani, did you tie the animals?” she asked.
“Yes”
And mother that she was, her heart hurt inside her chest.
The women of her tribe, were taught housework before they learnt to talk and they were taught how to respect their men even before they learnt to walk. Rukhsana knew her parents must have sinned for they bore a daughter. She knew that she must live with the curse, that she must know her place in this world.
And, she had. Even after seven boys and two girls she had given birth too, she had known her place and passed on her knowledge. She was a good woman.
Not once had she complained about the scars of a beating, nor had she prayed for an escape. He fed her, he gave her shelter, and he gave her children and protection, no not God, her husband.
What more could a woman ask for? It is a man’s place to be angry after all, frowns do not suit women.
Rani walked to her corner of the “house” and pulled the curtains shut. And there in the silence of the night, she cried. She cried like there was no tomorrow…..

“Bang!” The silence of her sleeping subconscious was shattered as she woke up startled.
And before she could stop herself, a soul curdling scream escaped her mouth.
“Father!” she cried.
Outside, the black storm clouds covered the sky, murdering the sun. She knew because she could see them now. She could see the specks of blood dripping down the wooden door….

(If you like it, i will continue and give the story an end :))
Seledepina.