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Charni
missed terribly the comforting and … conclusive presence of
Deva.
    “ Well, well, look
who’s here … it’s the young woman Charni.”
    Charni, after the surprise of the encounter,
tried to relax her body so as not to appear as alert as she really
was.
    Latha was dangerous and, above all, very
hurtful when she had more girls with her. Something that, in fact,
happened often enough. Although her following had been reduced
during the last cycle, she only needed to have one girl with her in
order to say whatever she wanted. And Latha always avoided
texturing her words whenever she could, in spite of the
difficulties that she had shown in learning new vocabulary sounds
over the passing of the cycles.
    This time, however, it was confusing not to
feel the presence of other girls. What was happening? Was it
related to the fact that Charni was a young woman while Latha was
still a girl? Was it possible that, due to this difference, she did
not want to be perceived as harassing an older person? Interesting
…
    “ What do you want,
Latha?”
    “ What a tone of voice. Has
becoming a young woman so early gone to your head? Does it bother
you to talk to a girl? Or have you finally decided to texture
yourself as you really are? You can’t fool me. You’re as big a liar
as your mother.”
    Charni sighed, tired. No,
she wasn’t going to get dragged into that game, although
…
    “ Of course, Latha. Only a
master of deceit like you would be able to spot a novice like me. I
was foolish to try.”
    “ Joke all you want now,
and I’ll let you because no one is perceiving us, but I’m going to
texture something to you very well. You might be a young woman, but
I’ll never let you be queen. You carry the information of insanity
in your blood and I won’t let you drag us all down with
it.”
    “ What are you talking
about?”
    “ Don’t act dumb. My mother
told me about your sister.”
    “ What do you know about my
little sister if she hasn’t even left the house yet?”
    “ Not that sister, stupid.
I mean your crazy sister. The one who was banished from this world
so that she would suffer the killing storms of the unlimited world
for betraying the Ksatrya women.”
    “ I have no idea what
you’re talking about. I only have one sister.”
    “ Really?”
    She came so near that
Charni’s nose was flooded by Latha’s breath. Charni felt her so
close that she perceived the threat and disdain with a thoroughness
she had never noted before in her enemy.
    “ Do you want me to believe
that you don’t know anything? That you believe you’re the first
girl your mother produced? Ha! Maybe she was the one who pronounced
the sentence that silenced all the protests, so that now women
don’t even talk about it in private, but I can’t believe that she
hasn’t warned you about the information that you carry inside. That
she didn’t tell you about your crazy sister, or that she took her
own life after she produced two aberrations. I told you, you aren’t
fooling me. You can’t fool me. You’ve been warned, Charni. Maybe I
won’t wind up being queen, but I won’t make it easy for you to
become queen, either. For the good of the Ksatrya women, I’ll do
everything in my power to stop it.”
    Finally, Latha backed away
and left without another word. Charni, unable to move, was glad
that her now-declared enemy preferred sounds to textures or else
she would have noticed the tears that were running down Charni’s
cheeks.
    But why had Latha’s lies
hurt so much? Why had her body reacted to Latha’s rage that way
instead of being like Deva and conclusively showing her rejection?
And, most importantly, why did she continue to feel so bothered and
confused even though she no longer perceived Latha’s
presence?
    She cleaned her face, recovered her dignity,
and continued home while her head could not stop turning over all
those lies that somehow seemed more important than they were.
Impossible.
     
     
    When she arrived at