CAUTION: This story contains implied sexual activity between minors, violence, and profanity. Reader discretion is advised.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Assam Chai
by IndigoNeko
Epilogue
Sunday, July 24th, 2016
Heinrich Pullman carefully closed the door to his son’s bedroom and turned in place before hobbling to the opposite side of the hallway to peer into his two daughters’ bedroom. The pair of nightlights in it were more than sufficient to allow the lizard to see his daughters’ profiles. They were quietly sleeping in their respective beds to either side of the door, under blankets of purple and fuschia... their favorite colors. Having checked on his children, the monitor lizard turned and used his crutches to make his way down the short hallway to the bathroom, where he relieved himself, then washed his hands. As he stood over the sink, he looked up at the mirror.
The lizard in the reflection was a bit more gaunt, the scales a bit more dull, and the eyes a bit harder than he’d remembered. His wife was right; the past two months had aged him quicker than the past ten years. Heinrich ran his clawed fingertips over the thin scar on his chest, where Ivan’s bowie knife had entered his chest. On anyone else, such a wound would have been fatal... but his heart was on the wrong side of his chest.
The mangrove monitor sighed and hefted his crutches before turning and swinging his legs towards the doorway. He stopped to turn off the bathroom light before continuing across the hallway and back into the master bedroom. The lamppost across the street cast just enough light through the windows to make out where the bed was, which was a good thing since morning was several hours away and he didn’t want to wake his wife. He hobbled his way across the bedroom with his crutches until he reached his side of the bed.
The fact that he was mobile at all was a huge improvement. The two weeks of captivity that had left him with the scar on his chest had also left him with numerous broken bones. The hip spica cast and the elbow brace were gone now, and the pins and plates in his collarbone and jaw had been removed... though he still had to wear a brace around his thigh and use crutches for another month. At least he had the freedom to use the restroom on his own now, which was more than he’d had a week ago.
The bed creaked as Heinrich sat down on it. He leaned the crutches against the nightstand and swung his legs up onto the bed. He used a foot to lift the bedsheet from near the end of the bed, then flicked his tail to toss the sheet within reach. He pulled the fabric up over his chest and lay back against his pillow with a sigh.
He twitched as something touched his shoulder, then relaxed as his wife ran her hand over his scaled hide. Fabric rustled as she rolled over, against his side. “Everything okay, honey?” Isabel asked, reaching across his chest and pulling him close.
“Yes. I was checking on the kids and using the restroom,” he whispered back, reaching up to touch her arm.
“Mmmkay,” she whispered, relaxing against his side. “I love you.”
“I love you too, dearest,” he replied, patting her arm.
Heinrich stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to claim him. He knew they were safe enough. The house had an alarm system now, and his recently recovered revolver was sitting in the nightstand, just in case. Most importantly, the monster that had inflicted all the pain and misery that he had suffered for the past two months was dead and buried, gone forever from this mortal coil. He sighed, taking great comfort in that thought, and closed his eyes.
To the eastern side of the town of Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, a small office building stood at the edge of the Senchal forest range. It was only four stories tall, because of a town statute that limited buildings to at most twelve meters high. On the top floor, to the right side of a small reception room, was an office door with a bronze plaque that read ‘Rohan Tashi, Chairman’. Various knicknacks and dozens of leatherbound books lined the shelves of the spacious office, which had an incredible view of the unspoiled forest east of town.
A muscular tiger wearing a dark green kurta sat on a leather office chair behind a heavy teak desk, staring at a computer screen. At the moment, Rohan was fuming at the email he was reading from the University of Delhi. The head of the History department had written to him to inform him that they had exhausted every possible avenue of research into mystical or religious solutions to the so-called ‘curse’.
The team of scholars that Rohan had commissioned, consisting of eight of the most well-educated historians in India, were collectively fluent in almost every language known to have been spoken in India, including some that hadn’t been spoken in two thousand years. They’d spent months going every possible scrap of paper, parchment, or talapatra in India (and many outside of it) that might even remotely refer to Durga, Parvati, Dawon, Somnandi, or the Ghatokbahini. The email Rohan was reading now was both verbose and unapologetic about their failure to find anything else of use... not that he expected anything else from the ‘best’ historians in India.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of religious texts documented how the goddess Durga had received her mount, Dawon, from the King of the Himalayas. Far fewer mentioned how she had blessed Dawon with Fury, and only a handful of the most ancient texts talked of Dawon after leaving Durga’s side and how he became the Ancestor of Tigers, siring a pride of his own before heading north, towards the Himalayan mountains where he’d come from. After that, Dawon vanished into the annals of myth, never to be heard from again.
The most ancient of those texts referred to the Fury as a curse, not a blessing. The curse was the reason the Ghatokbahini was unable to remain with the pride he had sired. It was the reason that tigers were solitary predators, unlike lions. And it was the reason that Rohan’s species was dying. The Fury may have helped his species in ancient times, when an affinity for violence increased one’s likelihood of survival. But in modern society, those who were prone to violence tended to have short lives that ended in incarceration or death.
Rohan was so familiar now with the many variants of the Devi Mahatmyam and the Chandi Path that he dreamed about the ancient legends almost every night. While the ancient religious works explained why the world was the way it was, and gave excellent spiritual guidance, they didn’t say anything about how to cure the curse. That was frustrating, as Rohan couldn’t exactly force his entire species to start chanting Om Shanti mantras or start practicing Ashtanga Yoga... as he was currently doing at this very moment in an attempt to keep his anger under control, rather than pitching his computer monitor through the office window.
The japa worked, and he managed to restrain himself from an act of violence. Which was a good thing as his secretary knocked on the doorway to his office a moment later. “Mister Tashi, we’ve received a fax from Professor Banerjee of the Indian Institute of Science,” the young tigress said, holding up a thick stack of papers stapled together.
Rohan felt his left eyelid twitch. The fact that people still used fax machines in the year 2016 was... he had no words for such buffoonery. And from an institution of higher learning, no less. “Bring it here, Sana,” he said, waving her inside. She quickly padded over and set it on his desk, then left without saying a word. Before picking up the stack of papers, the tiger picked up the cup of Assam chai that had been sitting on his desk since breakfast. He sniffed it, then wrinkled his nose. It had started to go sour.
