Devsena- 5 kisses that never were. Sivvu- 5 people who taught her something.
The last time she sees her father alive, she is angry with him. Devasena hardly remembers why. It might have been some childish complaint: that he had told her to study her letters than join him on the hunt, that he had upheld her nurse’s decree that a princess ought to wear fine silks rather than more comfortable garments. Either way, it had been foolish, and selfish, and—
When he bent down to kiss her goodbye, she’d turned her head away out of pique. He made no complaint: Father never had, about anything. Jayasena does not know, no more than her nurse, but nonetheless it lingers in her memory, a secret shame.
Her first kiss, Devasena decides, ought to be a matter of great import. Such is only fitting for a daughter of Kuntala, land that fosters romantic fancies alongside, paradoxically, a culture built on pragmatism and plainspokeness. It must be, she dreams, at midnight, rimmed by moonlight, the climax to a challenge given and returned.
It must be utterly perfect--except perfection is an intimidating goal to expect, for a girl of not-quite-fifteen.
Devasena loses her nerve five months in and casually kisses a friend employed at the stables one afternoon. Better, she tells herself, to get it over with than to wait for a day that will never come, and so she reliquinshes her fantasies with only the slightest pang.
There is a trader who sails down the river once, boat laden with stores just as her lips as laden with stories of her travels. They are wonderful things: lands faraway where miracles occur, peoples of every shade and shape imaginable. “I don’t believe you,” Devasena declares when hearing of a land where a single wall stretches on for yojanas. “Such a marvel could never exist!”
“Then see it for yourself, Crown Princess,” says the trader, eyes dark, and Devasena looks up, startled. The invitation is clear; it would take so little to answer it, and Devasena can’t deny that a part of her longs to say yes, but--
“Kuntala needs me,” she says, a reluctant apology, and the trader nods in silent acceptance.
She wants suddenly, desperately to kiss her stranger. Not merely because he’s proven that he’s perfectly capable of facing the threat of a charging bull--had she not guessed as much days previous?--but everything within her sings with the assurance that what she feels is like nothing before.
Devasena is not so lost to shame or sense to forget that a battlefield is hardly the place to indulge such impulses. Later, she promises herself; there will be time to see to such things later.
Later she wishes that she had thought to ask for more than a kiss farewell on the forehead.
Unthinkable to ask that Baahubali not leave her, of course, not when Kattappa’s life was at risk; but it would have been something to have the memory of one last kiss to last her throughout the long years following.
Her mother teaches her to shoot, or at least tries to. Sivvu’s grip on her arrow is all wrong--too accustomed to holding a pen than any other weapon--and she can’t help but hold her elbow at an awkward angle. “Gopala save us,” Mother pronounces at last, and switches to instructions of the sword. To everyone’s relief, not least Sivvu’s own, she proves far more talented at this.
Mahendra has no sense, Sivvu learns that soon enough, and she’s not half his age when she reasons out that following him up the latest challenge he wants to climb is foolishness. Nevertheless he knows the palace better than she does, having years of advantage to learn it first, and when he points out the passages and paths to avail herself of and avoid, she always listens.
Armies trembled before Grandfather once, but these days, at Father’s command, he spends most of his days tending his grandchildren. Perhaps this might work more efficiently, had Grandfather anything more than instincts to guide him, but no, instead his ideas of childcare usually involve long convoluted stories that are as dull, Sivvu privately thinks, as Father always teases. At least he knows how to cook--and Sivvu, reasoning that at least she and her brother ought to know their way around the kitchens, always begs him to share what he knows.
She is too quiet, Uncle decides, and sets about teaching her to project her voice. He chooses the halls of the palace where echoes travel the furthest, to encourage her, and by the end, Sivvu can make herself heard at thirty paces should she want to.
She doesn’t, not often. The palace is loud enough as it is, and besides, forcing a crowd to silence if they want to hear what she whispers is one of her favorite tricks, but--it has its uses.
(Startling Mahendra into silence, for instance.)
“What would you have me learn?” Sivvu asks her father one evening. There is no one more admired in all the world as Father, except maybe Mother, and if she can only be half as accomplished as he, then wouldn’t that be something to be proud of!
But Father only shrugs and says, “To take pride in yourself just as you are--as I take pride in you.”
