The farmhouse wasn't big and it wasn't small. It was... available. A squat, aging structure squinting at the sunrise through windows that never quite closed right. Its wooden frame groaned when the wind flirted too hard, and its roof leaked exactly over the kitchen counter—a fact the universe considered hilarious and Adyanth's mother considered a challenge.
To the east sprawled the farmland—mostly millet and guilt—with fencing so old even the termites filed complaints. To the west, the village of Purathel slumbered in its usual haze of gossip, cow dung, and suspicious looks.
Purathel was three kilometers from Marundar, a border-town just a little too close to the war's kiss. Beyond that border lay Ravahaan, the "aggressor state" according to Varasthan's government announcements, aired hourly by static-choked radios and people who should've retired decades ago.
Adyanth had never seen the war. He'd only seen its paperwork.
The ration cards. The price spikes. The air raid sirens that had better attendance than the local school. He was born a week before the war began and ever since, his existence had walked in perfect sync with the nation's downward spiral.
His parents named him Adyanth, which in Old Varathi meant "the one who bring the end and lasts beyond the end."
He often wondered if that was meant to be inspiring, or if his parents just had a grim sense of humor.
---
The other children didn't share his confusion—they settled on the "grim" part early.
When he was five, someone said he was cursed.
When he was six, someone's older brother swore they saw a cloud burst only over Adyanth's side of the playground.
When he was seven, the village cricket match was interrupted by both a thunderstorm and a Ravahaan scouting drone.
Guess who was batting?
---
By age twelve, Adyanth had compiled some data of his own. One: children were cruel, yes, but also remarkably lazy in their originality. Two: fate had a sense of slapstick comedy. And three: if anywhere in the world felt... livable, it was home.
Not "safe." Just tolerable.
---
He liked the smell of his mother's hair oil and the way her hands danced when she stirred porridge. He liked pretending to help her in the kitchen, wielding knives with the caution of a prisoner on parole. And he liked going to the farm with his father—mostly because his father pretended not to notice how useless he was with a shovel.
"Hold this," his father would say, handing him a basket of freshly dug groundnuts.
"Why?" Adyanth would ask, already calculating the optimum spot to sit down and not get dust on his trousers.
His father, Dhavalan, was a generational farmer. The kind of man who believed honesty could mend a torn sky and whose moral compass didn't just point north—it guilt-tripped others into following it. His own father had farmed. And his father's father. At this point, the land was probably more of a relative than most humans.
After the war started, food prices jumped like they'd seen a trampoline for the first time. Every other farmer in Purathel raised their prices.
Not Dhavalan.
"No one should profit off hunger," he'd say.
Adyanth didn't say what he thought, because he still needed breakfast.
But one day he did.
It was after overhearing the local grocer, Kemmudi, brag about selling Dhavalan's carrots for triple the price while paying him in tea and "blessings."
At twelve, Adyanth wasn't prone to tantrums—but he was prone to sarcasm that cut like a sickle.
"So," he said, arms crossed, "our business model is 'get robbed politely'?"
Dhavalan chuckled. "That's not very fair, Adya."
"Neither is starvation."
Later that week, Dhavalan went door to door, selling vegetables at base price.
Adyanth assumed this meant his father had finally grown a spine. Until he realized the man refused to accept even a single coin above market value.
"He tipped you five whole coins," Adyanth hissed one evening.
"I told him to take it back," Dhavalan said, utterly unconcerned, as though turning down money was a new yoga pose.
Adyanth stared at his father for a long time.
Then looked at his mother. She just gave him that smile—that kind smile. The one that could melt icebergs. The one that made it so hard to stay mad.
He wasn't sure if she was kind, or just incredibly clever at winning every emotional battle in the house.
He loved her. That was the problem.
Because she, too, believed in things like honesty. Empathy. Sharing rice with neighbors who'd once accused him of making the rain fall.
They were good people.
And Adyanth... wasn't sure he was.
---
Sometimes he wondered if he was broken.
Other times he suspected the world was—and his calibration was just inconvenient.
But he didn't say that out loud. Because his parents would sigh and smile and say things like "You're twelve, sweetheart," as though the universe wasn't already drafting casualty lists in crayon.
---
The war never knocked directly on Purathel's door, but its shadow loomed thick. Supplies came late. Patrols came early. The economy felt like a tired mule—still pulling, but only because no one had told it it was dead yet.
Black market flour was cheaper than government flour. Fuel was triple-priced. Teachers were drafted. Roads grew potholes the size of water buffalo. No one fixed them. No one dared to care. Caring made you a target, or worse, a fool.
In a way, Adyanth respected that apathy.
It was honest.
---
But in spite of it all, the little farmhouse remained a pocket of warmth. Not immune to reality—just unreasonably stubborn about joy.
Even if the joy came wrapped in absurdity.
Like the time his father tried to teach him to milk a goat.
"You squeeze gently. Gently, Adya—she's not a juice box."
Or when his mother caught him trying to fry plantain chips and ended up saving the house from what she referred to as "banana-fueled arson."
And always, always, there was the roof leak. The eternal, undefeated drip right above the kitchen counter.
"I told you, it only leaks when someone lies," his mother would say.
Adyanth glanced at the drip. Then at his father. Then back at the drip.
"I didn't lie," Dhavalan protested, laughing.
The drip fell.
---
At night, Adyanth would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, listening to the insects harmonize with the old radio.
A man with a rich voice would be listing casualties, political speeches, and brave victories.
Adyanth didn't believe in brave victories. Just postponed losses.
But he believed in routine. The pulse of days well spent. The comfort of knowing exactly how the morning would start: with porridge, sarcasm, and a father who still believed people deserved to eat even if the world didn't.
And if someone had asked him back then—where would you like to be, more than anywhere?
He'd have said: Here. Home. With two fools too kind for this war.
Because at least here, when the universe laughed... his family laughed back.
He didn't know that the laughter had an expiration date.
Didn't know that kindness doesn't shield against shrapnel.
Didn't know that the world, eventually, notices even the quiet ones.
And somewhere, just beyond the hills of Purathel, someone was already loading the shell that would burn down everything Adyanth loved—and leave only the shell that is him.