and Krishna killed him. And it wasn’t Krishna’s fault…” I sighed, looking away. “Kaliya was supposed to live away from humanity because he couldn’t learn to control his power. He was too dangerous and broke the rules. He was paranoid and scared when someone came to tell him to leave and go back to his home. But he was only protecting himself and his family from Garuda. He was stuck between Krishna and Garuda. Krishna killed him and sent him to the underworld. There are actually two naga realms in the underworld, but…” I shrugged. It didn’t really matter. I didn’t personally understand the distinction between them and how some nagas ended up in one and others in the other. One had Kaliya, and the other had Vasuki, who was a whole different conversation.
“Dig a little deeper next time,” I told him, smiling tightly. “This is all on the internet.” I made sure ages ago. Humans just needed to learn how to find it and understand it.
“Oh…Wow. I feel for him.” Raphael’s eyebrows went up, and I wondered if he saw the parallels. Trying to do anything he could to save his family, my ancestor Kaliya crossed paths with someone more dangerous than his original foe. In the end, he died anyway. His fate was inescapable, no matter how good or bad he was. It was just his fate. “It was all Garuda’s fault.”
“That’s the general consensus among my people,” I agreed, nodding. “So, yeah, a lot of truth in that legend, but it’s often played off with Kaliya being the bad guy. They hear about what he did in Vrindavan and forget he would have never been there if it weren’t for Garuda, who…well, is thankfully dead now. The leaders of the naga have displayed Garuda’s bones in their homes for centuries.” I gave my mother’s portion of the collection to Adhar ages ago, but I grew up able to see them every day in a display case in one of our homes’ sitting rooms.
“Morbid, but can’t…form an opinion on it. Not my place, is it?”
“One day, you’ll embrace the monster in you, and you’ll find someone whose bones you want to keep,” I said, smiling a little as his face flushed.
“I don’t think I’ll ever go that far, but sure, you can believe that.”
“You should learn the pleasurable taste of revenge.” With my smile growing, I kicked the rug in my room enough to reveal the corner of a trap door. “And if you want to know all about my people, here’s where I keep everything about them.”
He might be my mate one day. He deserves to know.
I pulled open the trapdoor and grabbed the small chest, pulling it out of the little airtight space.
“I stole all of this. Inside, there’s some really…” I put the chest on the bed and opened it. “Gross things.”
“Holy…” He looked inside, and I knew he saw the jar first. “Why do you have…”
“A jar with eyes? Because our people are killed for our parts by some. I’ve told you about that, and you heard how those inmates taunted me about it. I find them and bring them home. One day, I hope to find everything and take it all back to India, or send it to someone I know can handle it. Give them all a proper burial in our homeland. Maybe one day, they’ll be reborn, and this will just be a bad memory for our kind.”
“Reborn?”
“That’s the funny thing about nagas. There’s only a thousand of us, and parting us out like this? Well, the belief is the souls of these nagas can’t be reborn until they’re whole again. That’s why our numbers keep dropping, and we’re not having enough children.”
“Wait, hold on. I’m still trying to get on the same page with the reborn comment. You mean reincarnation?”
“Yup.” I looked at him, totally unsurprised by his reaction. “Originally, a thousand nagas were born. They grew up and mated with human women, but no children were born. Then the first naga was felled in battle. Suddenly, one of those women got pregnant, and she gave birth to the first female naga. A thousand souls, constantly being reincarnated, over and over with no memories of their pasts. For a long time, we could tell who was reborn of who. It was more important than our genealogy. There was a ceremony, and we learned the identity of our previous life and could learn from that life’s experiences with others. My mother