“Mommy? Where are you?” Neha opened the door and led herself to the main room. The couch was still in its tattered state, the bitter scent had yet to die, and the room seemed to be shifting back and forth. The front door hung wide open, allowing the cold air to swirl in. “She must be running an errand. Why didn’t she bother to close the door?” Going to the kitchen, Neha stumbled upon an open cabinet, and to which it surprised her, there was an assortment of kitchen knives. She stood back.

“Did she open this?” She looked everywhere in the kitchen. The pots and pans sat quietly on the stove. The faucet was running water on its own, and Neha shut it off with a turn of a switch. She considered that her parent might have been intending to cook something, but it didn’t seem to be the case.

As she walked back to the main part of the room, her little feet creaked the floors. If her mother walked in and heard the noise, then she would have complained about it. Neha then headed to the couch and scuffled her hands through the cushions. She tried to find traces of her mother, anything she could deem as acceptable; her footprints, the schizophrenic evidence of her physical outbursts, her hair strands, and so forth. If there were to be scratch marks or broken boards, then it might be that her mother had left not too long ago to possibly cool down her rage. Neha would notice it right away, but nothing of that sort existed at this hour.

Soon it dawned on her that her mother had been out for a long time. Neha bolted to the front door, and for a moment the stars shone her feet, as though they were ready to whisk her away from all her problems. With a burst of energy from her nap, the child left the house. Along the way, instances of words like ‘angels’ and ‘happiness’ fleeted along her mind, her mother that recited such words soothed her heart. It spurred Neha that she had to retrieve her back before something bad could happen.

Neha traveled to the center of the village. A sparse number of people roamed around, talking to themselves. She approached them and asked an endless amount of questions; nobody had an idea of where her mother was, and they claimed to have never noticed her during the day. It left Neha dejected, but she continued her pursuit. She went north, and shifted her eyes to every spot her mother could be hiding, from the corner full of stray cats to the dumpster by the restaurants. Now, the moonlight illuminated the streets and smoothened the cobblestones, and the darkness dissipated; glitters floated from the bottom of Neha’s feet. When she reached the end of the northern district, she halted and saw from afar the western gate. A dead end it was.

She turned around and sighted an empty space among the row of buildings. In tears, she whimpered. The abode that used to be there for a while, it had vanished from the village. Where Usheniko once lived, inside her tent full of wonders and mysterious things, and where Usheniko once provided a time of comfort and solace for the girls, the military had annihilated every trace of Usheniko’s existence, so no one bothered to say anything about her, or even mentioned one sentence about her; but the girls continued to carry memories of her.

Within the empty spot, there lied a dirt mound. Flowers wilted upon it and a twig stuck outwards. “Sachen must have put them here,” Neha said. “I didn’t get a chance of doing the same thing. Maybe I will soon.” On the gap between her feet, a lavender flower glistened and swayed. Neha wished for this flower to survive, so that tomorrow she could pluck and bury it into the spot.

Neha left the northern district and made her way to the south. She fancied that her mother might be getting herself in an altercation with the officials of the High Order. It was strange to think about, since Aijin would dwell in the house most of the time, but the possibility was great. Neha had within her mind, no doubts or denials that it was most likely true. She hurried forth, burning her calves and spending her breath.

Neha’s legs began to fall apart, and at this rate could she snap and descend to the ground. But she made it to the temple. There, the towers gleamed a light fainter than the stars. A wave of light brightened the interior of the building and blinded the windows.

“What’s going on?” Neha crept up to the front side. “The temple shouldn’t be open this late.” Neha grew hesitant. Stepping into the temple without notice was a guarantee of trouble. To disturb the officials would provide her a slap from the back of their hands, and for sure she didn’t want that. Neha shivered, and her heart palpitated. She began to worry more about her safety more so than her mother’s. Was it better to return home, leaving the events to their course? Neha constantly shook her head and dug her nails on her palms, and such a question made things so difficult for her that she considered running away.

Just as she felt it, her feet shuffled. Neha, gaining control of herself, walked to the front doors and knocked. A bout of silence sailed to her ears. She swiveled the door knobs and entered inside. In amazement, the chandeliers on the ceiling shined the flowers and grooves on the balcony. The incandescence deepened the colors in the portraits, making the faces of the Lamas more lively. On the ceiling contained unfinished sketches of the gods, it was halfway done with a pale paint job and chipped layers. From its radiant glimmers, it wowed Neha and drowned her eyes, for she had never seen this sight during the night.

Neha then sifted through all the aisles and seats. Her mother might be hiding under the chairs, either crying to herself or sleeping. Neha also guessed that her parent must have went to the wrong place at night, as it could stem from her exhaustion.

She ran her fingers through the carpets of the aisles and the armrests and the cushions of the seats. She found nothing. No hair, no blood, no body. Neha headed to the stage and combed over the entire place. The curtains, the steps, the chairs she picked her hands on, she went from one side of the stage to another. Her feet clamored the floor, and its sound bounced around the walls and resonated the air as if somebody was singing. Then going to the jade statue, she knocked on it a few times, quite a disturbance to the motionless monk. She held an expectation that her mother was residing there, which was a silly thing to consider, but she believed it anyway.

Again did Neha fail to find her. She slapped her legs and hyperventilated. Where could she be? It was becoming more possible that her mother was not in the temple; she could be in the forest or the grasslands, those places that made Neha’s skin crawl if she went there alone.

Neha took a deep breath. Once her chest fluttered, she heard something from the back door. What seemed to be a faint noise at first turned boisterous; from the other side, a commotion stormed the silence of the air. Neha sweated and rattled, she slumped her shoulders. She planted her ears against the door, and screams and curses invaded her eardrums. It came from a bunch of people, possibly a hundred of them. Neha leaned towards the statue, and she wanted to get away from the cauldron of their voices. But her body could not budge an inch. Now it was to her that escaping from this circumstance was impossible; she had to know what was happening.

With shaky hands, Neha opened the door, and the door moaned. Before her was a square room, small enough to walk to the opposite side in a few seconds. On the floor, the chairs and tables splintered in half, the sparkles on its polish blackened. On the far side, the curtains from the window plunged into tatters, revealing smudges of fingerprints and blood marks. To add to the mess, claw marks occupied the walls, and it seemed to be that a cat could have done damage; but large and deep those marks where, it held no place for such a creature.

Neha diverted her glance to the left corner of the room. Only when she realized it, a dozen soldiers were attacking and seizing a woman. Blood and spit, they spewed everywhere without a moment of consideration. Neha fell to the floor.

“Mommy!” Her voice fell upon deaf ears. From the corner, Aijin resisted against the might of the soldiers. She smashed her fists on their armor, bit one of the soldier’s fingers, and spitted on their faces. Her eyes became bloodshot, and she scowled at a clergyman that hung about the window area. Without warning, she broke away. She charged onto the man, and the man opened his hands and shielded himself. Before everybody’s eyes, Aijin brandished a kitchen knife. In a flash, she buried the blade onward the man’s left hand, and blood fountained from his palm. With a scream that shattered the window, the man rolled around the broken furniture.

Three soldiers tackled the mother from behind. They grabbed her arms and kicked the back of her legs, then throwing her to the corner. But Aijin did not waver yet. She headbutted a soldier’s jaw and drew the knife towards another soldier’s throat. One of the soldiers snatched her weapon away, and the dozen of them lunged at the woman. They restrained her with handcuffs. From the side, a pair of men escorted the clergyman to the stage, and they wrapped a cloth around his wound.

Watching this on the sidelines, Neha was at a loss for words. She wanted to cry, she wanted to force herself to pray that everything should turn out well for her family; but the reality of the situation did not grant her to such wishes. As it unfolded, the situation became so terrifying that perhaps, Neha didn’t need to wake up from this nightmare—she was living in it. It was not only that, but the sudden nature of this instance made Neha think otherwise of what could have happened if she had not entered this room. Most likely, she might have lived in peace, and her mother would be out of sight and out of her mind. But for Neha to think that, she knew it was only an unattainable dream.