Nobody slept properly that night, and by the time gray light came up over the eastern hills, most of Tirtayasa had gathered near the pavilion anyway, too shaken and too awake to pretend otherwise.
Rama sat with their daughter finally asleep against him, exhaustion having won out somewhere past midnight, and watched the village work through the specific communal process of people deciding, together, what they'd actually witnessed. Small clusters of conversation. Glances toward him that stopped being subtle sometime around the second hour. Darman, off to one side, recounting something to a group of men who hadn't been close enough to see it directly, his hands carving shapes in the air that Rama recognized, uncomfortably, as an attempt to demonstrate speed no gesture could properly convey.
Sekar sat beside him, hands finally clean, exhaustion carved into her face in a way seven weeks of careful performance had never once let show before tonight.
