Ever since Elowen's death, Asoka had been warned to behave herself.
The warning had never been spoken harshly. It came wrapped in gentle advice, in careful words chosen by the elders when they thought kindness would be more effective than command. They told her to mind her steps, to keep her head lowered, to remember her place. She had nodded each time, accepting the counsel without fully understanding why it had been given to her and not to others. At the time, she assumed it was grief that made them cautious, or concern for a girl left alone too early.
Yet the warnings lingered, long after mourning should have softened.
What unsettled her most was not the advice itself, but the way it followed her everywhere, like an unseen hand guiding her movements. If she lingered too long at the crossroads, someone would remind her it was improper. If she asked too many questions, she would be met with silence, or a look that suggested she had already said enough. No one accused her of wrongdoing, yet she was treated as though she stood perpetually on the edge of it.
There were nights when she lay awake, staring at the ceiling, trying to recall her sister's face.
She could remember Elowen's absence vividly—the hollow space she had left behind, the weight of grief that had settled into Asoka's chest and never quite lifted. But when Asoka reached for memories of laughter, of shared chores or whispered secrets, there was nothing. Only the dull echo of loss. The same was true of her father. She knew, in a distant way, that he had been kind, that he had taught her how to measure grain and mend tools, yet the moments themselves were blurred, as though time had worn them smooth.
It troubled her more than she allowed herself to admit.
Grief, she told herself, could do strange things to the mind. Loss could hollow out memories, leaving only their outlines behind. Still, there were times when she felt as though something had been taken from her—not by time, but deliberately. The thought would surface unbidden, then slip away before she could grasp it, leaving behind only unease.
The settlement appeared orderly on the surface. The church bell rang at the proper hours, calling people to prayer and marking the passage of the days. The priests spoke of obedience, labor, and humility, and the villagers listened, paid their tithe, and returned to their work. Outwardly, everything followed the rules laid down by the church and its teachings.
Yet beneath this order, there were things Asoka could not name.
She noticed them in small ways: the way certain paths were avoided after nightfall, the way conversations lowered when elders passed by, the way people spoke of tradition without explaining what those traditions were. There were customs that did not come from the church—gestures made quietly, old phrases murmured under the breath, gatherings that were never announced yet somehow always known.
Asoka did not understand these things. She only knew that they existed, lingering at the edges of daily life.
She had once asked, gently, about a marking carved into the stone near the old well. An elder had smiled and told her it was nothing of importance, something left behind by those who came before. She had not pressed further. She had learned, over the years, that curiosity rarely brought answers—only more warnings to be careful.
The contradiction between the church's authority and these unspoken practices unsettled her, though she lacked the words to explain why. The church owned the land, governed trade, and set the laws, yet it did not seem to touch everything. There were spaces beyond its reach, moments where its presence faded and something older seemed to linger instead.
Asoka kept these thoughts to herself.
She worked, as she always had, filling her days with labor to quiet her mind. From dawn until dusk, her hands were occupied—sweeping, planting, repairing, measuring, selling. Hard work left little room for questions, and exhaustion dulled the sharper edges of thought. Still, there were moments when her body remembered what her mind could not. A chill would run through her without cause, or her chest would tighten at the sound of certain words, spoken too softly to be meant for her.
The warnings to behave herself took on a new weight then.
They were not about modesty or obedience alone. They were about restraint—about staying within invisible boundaries she could sense but not see. As long as she followed them, life remained bearable. Predictable. Safe.
And yet, something in her resisted.
Perhaps it was the same stubbornness that fueled her dreams of leaving, of seeing what lay beyond the hills. Perhaps it was the quiet discomfort of living with unanswered questions. Or perhaps it was simply that the emptiness left by Elowen's death refused to settle, lingering like a wound that had healed incorrectly.
Asoka did not know the truth of what had happened to her sister. She did not know why certain memories eluded her, or why the elders watched her with such measured attention. She did not know what lay beneath the customs and whispered practices of her home.
But she knew this: whatever bound this place together was not sustained by faith alone.
And as the days passed, as her dreams of travel grew stronger and her unease deepened, she began to sense that leaving was not merely a desire—but a necessity. Not just to seek a better life, but to escape something she could feel pressing in from all sides, patient and unseen, waiting for her to forget entirely.