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Chapter 15 - Chapter 15: Thanks giving

Agasthya stood at the palace garden wall as the sun dipped into a soft orange haze. The leaves barely moved. The city, for once, had fallen into stillness.

Behind him, Devaki knelt before a tulsi plant, brushing its leaves gently as she prayed.

"Mother," Agasthya said quietly.

She turned, her fingers still green with dust.

"I want to leave for a few days."

She didn't answer right away. She studied his face like a painter inspecting a half-finished idol.

"Where?"

"Vrindavan."

A pause.

Then a breath. "You're not going for Krishna."

"I'm going for the ones who kept his name safe," he said. "The ones who smiled when he laughed. The ones who gave love without blood."

Devaki rose slowly, her hand brushing her sari into place. She stepped toward him and cupped his face.

"They held him," she said. "But they never knew you."

"I know."

She nodded. "Then go. And if they call you by his name, let them. Just this once."

He pressed his forehead to her hands.

And she blessed him in silence.

---

Vrindavan shimmered like a place that refused to forget.

Children ran through the fields, and women sat by the river, washing clothes with tired laughter.

Agasthya walked the familiar path slowly, cloak drawn, hair tied back.

He didn't need to ask for directions.

His feet remembered from the stories he was told by Krishna.

And when he reached the low gate of a whitewashed home with flowering vines along the beams, his breath caught.

He knocked once.

Then again.

Yashoda opened the door.

She stared.

No words. No sound.

Only a hand rising to her lips.

She reached out and touched his cheek as if it would disappear.

Her knees buckled.

And he caught her gently, guiding her to sit on the wooden step.

She began to weep.

"I never asked for him back," she whispered. "But every day, I left the door unlocked."

Agasthya said nothing.

He just held her hand.

Nanda appeared from inside, stepping out into the light.

He paused, gripping the doorframe.

And for the first time in a decade, he smiled.

Not wide. Not with joy.

Just… with knowing.

"You knew the road," he said.

Agasthya nodded.

"I know everything," he replied softly.

---

They sat inside that evening, the air warm with milk and sandalwood.

Yashoda brought him a brass bowl of sweetened curd. Her hands trembled as she set it down.

"You don't speak like a boy," she said.

"I stopped being one a long time ago."

"I should've known," Nanda added. "When the wind changed. When the cows moved without herding. The world shifts when someone like you walks through it."

Outside, a few villagers had gathered quietly near the house. Women with lamps. Children peeking from behind stone walls.

They didn't speak.

They didn't question.

They simply stared.

And for a moment—they believed.

But none of them said his name.

Because they didn't need to.

Agasthya looked up from his meal.

"I came to thank you," he said, voice low. "Not for raising Krishna. But for proving that love is stronger than blood. That joy survives even in exile."

Yashoda blinked back tears.

"I never held you," she whispered. "But my arms… they ache like I did."

He reached out, took her hand, and placed it over his heart.

"You did," he said.

"You just didn't know it."

---

At dawn, he prepared to leave.

The villagers stood in silence near the edge of the road. No songs. No farewells. Just the sound of wind moving through grass.

Yashoda pressed a small packet of butter into his hand.

"Take this," she said. "Even gods need to eat."

Nanda bowed his head. "Come back when you're no longer carrying the world."

Agasthya turned to them both.

And bowed deeply.

Then walked into the morning.

---

Back in Mathura, Krishna waited at the gate.

"You told them?"

"No," Agasthya said. "They knew before I knocked."

Krishna placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Are you ready now?"

Agasthya nodded.

"Then let's begin."

---

And for the next ten years—they trained.

Agasthya honed Krishna's mind into stillness, Balarama's strength into precision, and Karna's fire into wisdom.

They became not princes.

Not heroes.

But forces shaped by silence, sharpened by memory, and driven by things the world still didn't understand.

The boy the world had forgotten was no longer a secret.

He was becoming a storm.

--

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