Mass update time. Probably.
It's also time for some good news and some bad news! After this oneshot and the completion of Courtship of a Phoenix, I will be leaving the One Last God Kubera Fandom. It's been a great time writing these stories, but CoaP has taken literally all possible creativity in terms of the Kubera universe. I don't think I'll ever be able to write another multi-chaptered Fanfiction about Kubera again.
But who knows? Maybe inspiration will strike and I'll come up with a oneshot or something. ;)
This is, again, one of my earlier stories taken from KuCa.
Disclaimer: Kubera belongs to Currygom.
S-C-N-D
A stunningly beautiful woman kicked at a sleeping, green haired man. "Gandharva, stop moping around and go get a wife. If you don't get one in the next year, I'm going to tow you with me to see all every single female Nastika in our clan."
...
Menaka and the Sea Monster
...
Mistyshore was a prosperous country filled with humans, Quarters and many skilled magic users, but a million years before it was established by a council of magicians, it was simply a crimson field. If any Suras flying above happened to look down, all they would see is red stretching from the bottom of mountains to the shores of the ocean.
And a blue woman sitting in the middle of it.
She hummed while her hands reached for a petal from the pile of flowers in front of her. Contrary to what her clansmen claimed, making necklaces of flowers actually did take a considerable amount of skill. As her hands weaved the last petal in, she held up her lovely piece of work and smiled at it.
The necklace joined another one that she had made earlier around her neck. Menaka was about to reach for more flowers when she realized Urvasi wasn't coming to visit her today.
It was next week. How could she have gotten the dates mixed up?
Just as Menaka began shaking her head disbelievingly, a scream pierced the serene atmosphere.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" It was not actually voiced aloud but she heard it just as clearly.
As she looked up to her left, a blur of orange and yellow whizzed past her. Trails of tears fell behind the fleeing figure, some landing on Menaka's face. She reached to wipe them off with a tentative hand. Menaka didn't like it when Suras cried, and though she couldn't get a clear view of his face, she knew from his height that he was young. Only third stage.
BOOM.
"Eh?"
A huge ice spear crashed into her pile of flowers. Another spear flew well over her head, followed by an explosion as it landed somewhere behind her. And another, and another. The trail of spears followed the path of the orange-yellow Sura, who, luckily, sped up the mountain and out of danger.
Meanwhile, on the ground, heavy mist shrouded the field until Menaka could not see the ocean anymore. She sighed to herself, hoping desperately that she wouldn't have to fight before the day was over. Other Nastikas liked to tear each other apart, but not Menaka. Urvasi even told her about this big, bad, heartless sea monster who killed nearly every Sura that crossed his path. She didn't want to associate herself with those people.
A shadowed figure made its way through the mist. As the silhouette came closer, she could vaguely make out a blue man with green hair. He wore a long, white robe secured by a blue sash tied around his waist. Though it covered most of his body, Menaka could a spears of ice in place of his left arm and his two feet.
Was he from her clan?
Menaka didn't know a lot of Nastikas from her clan, but almost all of them knew her. To them, she was either dazzlingly beautiful or utterly useless. Everyone was of the opinion of one or the other. Only Urvasi truly loved and cared for her.
She could see from this Sura's straight face that he hadn't fallen for her womanly charm. Which could only mean that he was of the other category. She bit her lip nervously.
Will he give me a hard time?
But he only walked past her as if he had never seen her in the first place. Menaka gave a sigh of relief and returned to making her flower necklaces until another explosion sounded.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The scream was quieter, more distant, but no less terrified.
"Stop it!" Menaka yelled, turning around. She sprung forward, pushing her tail off the ground and leaping a good five hundred metres to the blue figure. Wrapping her tail around him, she rendered him immobile.
"…"
Menaka could see the Rakshasa getting away. The Sura in front of her knew it as well. Still, he didn't do anything, though she had a feeling that if he tried, he could seriously hurt her. She was already resisting the urge to shiver from the wave of cold temperature that his body emitted.
"Please don't kill," she begged. "Rakshasas have feelings too…"
"…"
"Instead, why don't you come and make flower necklaces with me? I just remembered that my friend isn't coming today so I'd love to have someone else accompany me. Oh! Here, have this," she offered, looping the purple necklace around her neck and onto his.
She quickly snatched it back.
"No, uh, my bad. I keep forgetting that green doesn't match with purple. Haha. My friend tells me that a lot too." She bit her lip nervously.
"…"
Menaka exchanged her orange necklace for his, fluffing it as she put it around his neck to make it look prettier.
Gandharva considered telling her that bright didn't really match bright green either, but since that required him to open his mouth, he refrained.
"W-wait!" she exclaimed. "Are you a Rakshasa? Is that why you don't talk?"
Finally, he couldn't contain his silence any longer. "You can understand Rakshasas too. Didn't you hear him—" he pointed a thumb towards the mountain "—scream?"
"Oh, right…" she laughed awkwardly while mentally hitting herself for her second silly moment that day.
"That was my lunch. Now I have to go hungry for the rest of the day because of you."
"But you shouldn't kill on such a beautiful planet!" she protested. The Sura's mist had cleared out now to unveil majestic mountains, beautiful fields and sparkling waters.
"Well then what do you do when you get hungry?"
"I don't get hungry often."
"I said when you do."
"Um, my friend brings food for me?" Now that the Rakshasa was safely on the other side of the mountains, she finally unraveled her tail and allowed him freedom.
He stared at her blankly, then turned and left.
BOOM.
"Uh—"
Menaka blinked. She blinked again. Somehow she doubted that if she blinked for a third time, the bloody Asura Sura before her would disappear and reveal itself to be a hallucination of her hunger.
She surveyed the ground for signs of a blue man, but couldn't find him until he slid down from the huge shell of the Sura and encircled her wrist with his thumb and pinky.
"Eat. You're way too thin."
"I-I thought I told you not to kill him!" she cried instead.
"Does this look like a Rakshasa to you?"
Oh. Right. She forgot about the size.
"Then?"
"It's a Mara."
Menaka finally accepted that some Suras did have to die in order for others to be fed. She skittered around the body of the Sura, trying to decide the best way to do this. Unlike most Suras, she did not take particular pleasure in eating. It was more of a necessity.
She tried biting it, but her teeth wouldn't even pierce the hard shell of the body. She grabbed it with two hands and yanked. It didn't move.
Gandharva felt like he was babysitting a small child. "No, you see," he said very patiently, "you must change into your Sura form when you eat."
"I know that," she replied, frowning. "I don't want to ruin the field of flowers."
Something may or may not have spontaneously combusted in Gandharva's head.
"You know what? Just—" He gathered a tremendous amount of energy in his left arm. Layers of ice formed, one on top of another until he had a huge fist that was the size of his head. Gandharva drew it back and slammed it against the body of the Sura, sending the corpse airborne straight into the water. "There. Now go feed before someone else does."
"Thank you!" Menaka cried, sliding into the waters.
He said nothing.
The sun traveled to the west quarter of the sky before there were any signs of her emerging. First the bubbles came, and then the tip of her head, followed by her body which was dripping wet and shiny with water.
"Thank you once again!" she yelled. "You're a very nice man! I'm Menaka. How about you? What's your name?"
But he was already gone.
S-C-N-D
"Urvasi!"
Nothing made her day like seeing a blue-purple figure approaching. With outstretched arms, Menaka ran towards her best friend, only to fall face flat on the ground when her tail went off balance.
"I'm okay!" she announced, pulling herself erect and then leaping to tackle Urvasi to the ground. "Urvasi! You're finally here! I missed you! I was so lonely on this planet!"
Armed with three necklaces, Menaka's smile indicated that she was ready to decorate Urvasi in flowers, just like every other time her good friend visited her.
The blue-purple Sura grabbed Menaka's shoulders and set her straight so that she could have room to breath. "Before you assault me with those necklaces, I'd like to introduce the big, bad, heartless sea monster. Are you ready for this?"
"Um, I don't know… didn't you say that he's scary?"
Urvasi gave her a very serious look. "Oh, yes. He's very scary. He's got six sharp fins to strangle Asura Nastikas, a mean glare, and a missing eye. Rumour has it that he once fought Asura who gauged out his eye—"
"Urvasi, what kind of far fetched tales are you telling to—"
Upon seeing each other, one blue man and one navy woman froze.
"Gandharva, Menaka. Menaka, Gandharva," Urvasi introduced with appropriate hand gestures."Gandharva, I know I promised to introduce all the women of the clan to you, but this is the only one that you can't have. Menaka is my baby sister," she cradled Menaka's head to her chest, "and she deserves a lot better than you."
Menaka was afraid of saying anything, so she didn't.
"…" Gandharva looked away, almost wishing that he could be anywhere else in the whole wide universe. "Visnu created Nastikas in the beginning of the universe by assigning us each a name. We are individual beings. We have no siblings."
"Technicalities," Urvasi dismissed with a wave of her hand. "You still can't have her."
"It's not like I want her…"
S-C-N-D
"Indifferent to three beauties!" Visnu remarked. "First Urvasi, then Shuri and now Menaka as well? Gandharva, my blue friend, tell me what pleases you."
"I don't want a wife."
"That's what Garuda said," chippered Shuri. "And then Vinata turned female."
S-C-N-D
BOOM.
In a yellow field of flowers, another Asura Sura's corpse slammed down in front of a navy Nastika. It was the blue man—Gandharva—again. At times he dropped by instead of Urvasi, always bringing Menaka food as he did. He claimed that she was malnourished and needed caring. In a way, Menaka did. Urvasi usually fulfilled that need.
She looked around at the huge body.
"You don't need to bring food for me every single time you come, you know."
"…" Gandharva was clearly a man of few words.
"Won't you come and feast with me at least?"
"Feast? This is barely a snack," he grumbled.
She laughed nervously, trying to dispel the mental picture of Gandharva killing much bigger Sura in order to satisfy his hunger.
"Well, okay…" Menaka told him. "Oh! Right, before I forget, here you go!" She took out a ring of yellow flowers and placed it around his neck. I didn't forget! What colour necklace would you like for me to make you next?"
And it never failed to be the only time when Gandharva allowed a smile to spread across his lips. He would respond right away, descriptively and almost embarrassingly, as if he had lots of time to consider it beforehand.
"I'd like purple, a nice, rich purple like the tips of Urvasi's hair."
S-C-N-D
"Urvasi?"
"Hm?"
"You used to say that Gandharva is a big, bad, heartless sea monster, but he's always been good to me."
Urvasi gaped in disbelief. "'Good' as in?"
"He visits a lot. And he brings me food."
She grabbed Menaka's shoulders and stared intensely into her dark blue eyes. "Menaka," warned her best friend, "food is not the only reason to love someone."
"Love?" asked Menaka blankly. "Are we talking about that?"
"NO! No," replied Urvasi, putting a relieved hand to her chest. "We are not talking about love and you should not be having warm, bubbly feelings for Gandharva at all."
"But I do feel warm and bubbly around him."
Urvasi sighed. "Menaka, the day you end up with Gandharva is the day I turn male. It's just not going to happen."
S-C-N-D
"We seem to have a dilemma on our hands," announced Shuri, one arm tucked underneath her breasts, supporting the other which in turn supported her chin. Visnu stood beside her, smiling complacently as usual, only because he already knew how the entire conversation would end.
"I don't understand the problem."
"Exactly," she said. "I don't understand the problem either. I don't understand why you feel the need to travel all the way to Willarv every time the four of us meet up, which incidentally happens to be once every other day. I also don't understand why Garuda cannot stay put for one single hour. One," she held up one finger, "without fidgeting and wondering why a certain someone isn't beside him. Let me tell you that I have been spending a lot of quality time with Visnu lately."
"Oh right!" Gandharva snapped his fingers. "I've been meaning to talk to Garuda. Where is he?"
"Off stalking his one true love," Visnu said. "You know, the norm."
"Oh." He tapped a firm fist against his palm. "Well, in that case, I'm going to go."
"Where are you going?" asked Shuri.
"Where else? To stalk my one true love."
S-C-N-D
Menaka wasn't there.
Gandharva panicked.
He had arrived by dropping an Asura Upani into the water, but there was no cheery voice to greet him afterwards. He searched all the fields, climbed all the mountains and looked into their caves, then dove into the ocean and ventured into every crevice and chasm. He even asked a few surrounding Suras if they had seen a blue woman.
But Menaka was not there.
S-C-N-D
"Urvasi, where are we going?"
They were submerged and Urvasi was holding Menaka's hand, almost dragging her along. They swam through a magical channel that connected the oceans of different planets. Menaka was hesitant. She didn't want Gandharva to visit the field while she was absent. What if he got mad at her?
She closed her eyes and prayed for the best. She had yet to see the scary side of the big, bad, heartless sea monster and would like to keep it that way.
"We're here!"
She opened them.
Everywhere she looked, sparkling waters stretched to the horizon. There was absolutely nothing else in sight except for the apex of a mountain jutting slightly above the horizon somewhere to the north—or what Menaka presumed to be the north because she sucked at directions.
"This is the domain of the big, bad, heartless sea monster," Urvasi told her with outstretched arms. "Most of our clan lives here. What do you think? Isn't it great?"
Menaka was conflicted. "It's nice but… there are no flowers."
S-C-N-D
On the shores of what would be Mistyshore, a navy blue woman emerged, dripping wet. She donned a bright smile as she surveyed her surroundings for the beauty that had been absent for a whole month. Willarv was the best planet after all, even if no other Gandharva Nastikas inhabited it.
Maybe it was bratty of her, but as soon as Urvasi suddenly got tired of being compared to Shuri and turned male, Menaka took that to be permission for her to return to Gandharva. She even asked to make sense. Urvasi didn't really protest, so she just slipped away.
At second glance, Menaka saw a figure sitting in a field of orange flowers. From this distance, she couldn't quite see who it was. Eager to make a new friend, she trudged out of the waters to get a closer look.
Soon it was clear to her that he was very engrossed in making one of those flower necklaces that she loved to make. Except, it seemed to take herculean effort for him to put anything together. Menaka almost giggled when he accidentally shredded what was probably not his first attempt at a necklace into bits and pieces of petals.
Angrily, Gandharva slammed two fists against the ground, uprooting several flowers and bringing millions of petal bits into the air.
"Gandharva!" she called, waving.
His eyes widened and jaw dropped at the same time. Discarding what was in his hands, Gandharva bulldozed a path across the orange field to where she was standing. Before Menaka could take two steps, his arms enveloped her figure and his hands dug into her hair, bringing her as close to him as possible.
"Menaka," he whispered. "Menaka, Menaka, Menaka, Menaka." For a minute, he kept repeating her name in various different tones, some soft, some edgy and others outright angry.
"Gandharva, what colour necklace would you like me to make you next?"
He finally let go of her skinny figure. "I tried making necklaces for you, for when you came back, but they kept falling apart." Two frustrated blue hands covered his face. "All I managed to make was a small loop. It doesn't fit around your neck. It won't even fit around your wrist, and it's too big to be a ring."
He drew out his attempt, a ring of white flowers that looked just big enough to fit around three fingers. Some of the petals were already withering, no doubt a result of his rough handling.
"Look at this failure."
"Hey, I like it," she told him. "Here, give it to me."
When he handed her his bracelet-ring, she took his hand instead. Smiling, Menaka looped the ring round one of his fingers, twisted it and looped it around one of hers.
"See? Perfect. Now you've made two matching rings," she giggled. "They probably won't last long, though, since we're kind of stuck together."
"It's okay," said Gandharva. Their eyes met in one magical moment. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him once again. "I like it this way."
Urvasi must have lied. She could hear the big, bad sea monster's heart beating quite soundly in tune with her own.
"As for the necklace," he continued, "I think white will do nicely. White for a wedding."
S-C-N-D
"Menaka, you don't understand. Gandharva is cold and heartless under normal circumstances, but when he likes something, when he really likes something—"
"Menaka!" Gandharva called, waving his entire arm as he ran toward them. "Menaka—oh, hey Urvasi—Menaka, guess what? I demolished an entire half of my ocean to plant a garden for you. It's beautiful. Come with me to see it!"
Urvasi simply gaped.
"Okay!" exclaimed Menaka.
Hand in hand, the king and queen literally skipped down the beach of Mistyshore into the waters.
Urvasi rubbed his throbbing temple. "Maybe I should get a wife…"
S-C-N-D
This was written before the folks at batoto cleared up the misconception that Nastikas had to have food to survive. I guess Menaka would be one of those people who never eat. :P
Thanks for reading! Please leave a review!
-SCND