Week 7 Story: Cerulean Riddles

The afternoon sun glanced lazily off the serene surface of the pond. Yudhistira stopped nearby, gazing into the depths; thoroughly entranced by the pureness and clarity of the water. For a foot or so from the bank, he could see a delicate sandy bottom. Here and there a large loach swam lethargically, unperturbed by the presence of Yudhistira. Farther out, the blue intensified to a deep sapphire color and the bottom dropped out into a seemingly bottomless abyss.

The Depths

The pond itself was nestled deep in the jungle, with dense foliage completely obscuring it from view. Yudhistira and his brothers had stumbled upon it after sweating for hours through the humid forest of vines and fallen teak trees. Upon seeing the water, his brothers had run forward greedily and splashed their faces.

The moment their hands broke the surface, the water had cracked with the noise of a splitting glacier. Small tendrils of water began to pull up from the pond. The only ripples in the pond came from the hands of the stunned brothers, staring in fascination at the being taking form before them. Like wisps of smoke, the tendrils rose higher, dancing slowly through the air. Like a damp fog, they whisked over the four at the water's edge. 

Yudhistira, having lagged behind coming into the clearing, watched is awe as the unnatural water moved about his brothers. Then it was over. The water fell from its suspension and was pulled back into the pond, dragging his brothers with it. The whole incident occurred in mere seconds. Ungodly forces come alive and his poor brothers whisked into the abyss before him.

Lamenting the loss of his brothers, Yudhistira reached out his hand and shakily placed his palm against the cool surface. Just as before, his ears rang as a deep crack sounded through the clearing and water trickled through the air. But even as the pond split and the tendrils reached out to him, the world spun to a stop.

I fly, yet I have no wings. I cry, yet I have no eyes. Darkness follows me; lower light I never see

The words slipped through his mind like a creek running against a rock. They were quick and fleeting, barely there and barely gone. He felt a presence around him, listening to him think. 

Waiting.

Waiting? An answer. It was a riddle and he needed an answer. To save his life he had to answer, but he needed to think. What can cry without eyes? He began to panic, desperately grasping for an answer.

Enough.

Yudhistira felt the world resuming around him and the water tightening like stone bonding to his skin, beginning to pull him down. They were all over him; crushing him. He hit the ground and rolled to his back as the depths pulled him into a cold embrace. The water was at his chin when a wisp of cloud drifted into his vision.

"It's a cloud!" He inhaled water and choked as the revelation hit him and the spirit in the water pulled at his body. As the words slipped from his lips, so did the pressure from his skin, leaving him floating gently in an empty pond.

Well met, Yudhistira.

With that, he was alone.

Authors Note:

I felt that this story wasn't that great in the Mahabharata. It seemed unreasonable that each of these great mean would run one at a time up to the body of their dead brothers and think: "I need a drink of water right now." That just didn't sit right with me. So I made it a kind of malicious entity rather than Yudhistira's father that could essentially distort time perception to ask a riddle. This meant that there was no time for the trained warriors to react, and no possible way out once you had touched the water. I also wasn't too fond of the idea that his brothers could be revived so I have casually left that out.

Bibliography:
Title: The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic
Author: R. K. Narayan
Year: 1978

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