I See Fire (Week 5: Storytelling)

You could hear hooves stomping across the desert trail, leaving a huge cloud of dust behind. The sight of fire made the horses neigh in fear but the messengers relentlessly continued. There was not a moment to lose.

Behind the misty mountains, the sun descended, leaving the sky an eerie red with a sense of foreboding. A grim quietness overshadowed the city of Ayodhya, not a soul in the streets, not even a mouse lingering in the open. There was no dancing, no singing, not even the buzzing of people in the street market. Just a sinister silence haunted the city all the way from the gates to inside the castle walls.

Without any notice, the quiet slowly faded away and a mesh of noises brought to life the scene within the chamber room, the blurred form of a man and woman arguing.

“He has to go… my two wishes…. promisedasgldgrlsgafs…”

What was going on?

And then the noise once again dulled as the scene shifted from the chamber room but soon enough sprang forth from a new direction outside the castle walls. Racing towards the entrance and forcing open the castle doors, a herd of elephants charged inside, thrashing against the walls and shattering their tusks.

That’s when the world seemed to crack; the moon had dropped from the sky, demolishing everything in a ripple effect. A high-pitched hum overwhelmed his ears.

Smoke rose from behind the mountains until the fire could be seen poking out from the rim. He could see it crawling down, growing ever near, till the crackling of the flames reached his hearing.

The waters of the ocean could not even consume this fire; the fire instead dried up the ocean, drinking in every last drop till the Earth was left dry and arid.

There, at the edge of this inferno, he saw standing the obscure image of Rama.

“Brother!” he called out.

He wanted to run, run away from the flames, away from the city, away from everything, but his feet were glued to the ground. Panic welled in his heart as he tried with all his might to move, the heat inching closer.

“Brother! Brother, save me!” he cried.

But Rama turned his head away and flung himself into the blaze.

“NOOOO!” he screamed in despair, tears streaming down his face and blurring his vision.

That is when a shadow emerged from the smoke. Rubbing his eyes, he blinked several times till the features of his father, the King, came to view. A sense of relief washed over him.

“Father! Father, Rama—“ he spoke, but the ash and smoke he breathed in cut him off.

“Yes… Rama…” he heard his father whisper. “Rama's bright soul has left our city... left me... and I no longer have a purpose to continue.”

“Father,” he coughed out, fighting for breath. “Father, what are you saying?”

Dasaratha’s legs gave out and his body hit the ground with a loud thud, leaving Bharata screaming awake to his brother Shatrughna shaking him. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead, his hands trembling.

“What is wrong?” Bharata forced himself to ask.

Shatrughna squeezed Bharata’s hands, looking him directly in the eyes. “Messengers have come. From Ayodhya.”

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Eerie skies of Ayodhya

Source: BBC

Author's Note: This whole scene was drawn out from the passage in the book that spoke of Bharata's nightmare and how anxious he felt. There were only a few short lines that mentioned this moment, specifically saying how in his dreams he saw the shattering of the tusks of his father’s elephants, the moon dropping on the Earth, and the oceans drying up. I just wanted to incorporate those three things and mesh together both reality and his dream in attempt to bring this moment to life and make you feel what Bharata could have felt. He sort of had a feeling of what was happening when he woke up, so I assumed that his dream gave him a sense of what was to come.

 It is really hard to put detail into a scene out of Buck's Ramayana, especially because he himself puts so much detail into everything he writes. However, he didn't really expand too much on this particular moment so I used that as an opportunity to play with it. I didn’t really change anything in the story; everything happened exactly how it did prior to the dream and after the dream. I simply added much more detail to what was going on within the mind of Bharata while he slept.

Bibliography: Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way.