He had the power to command the clouds, but the covenant demanded he first learn to guide a single drop of water.
Five years. In Shambhala, five years was a measure of seasons, not of progress. It was five cycles of mango blossoms yielding to the monsoon, five harvests gathered and shared. For Kalki, it was the span between his first breath and his first clear memory of the world being fractured.
He was sitting in the shade of a sprawling banyan tree, its aerial roots like the wizened limbs of sages. His father, Vishnuyasha, sat with the village council, their faces tight with a distress that felt alien in this haven of concord. Kalki was meant to be playing with the smooth, grey stones by the riverbed, but the dissonant energy of the adults was a buzzing fly he could not ignore.
The problem was water. Or rather, the lack of it.
The single, vital stream that fed all the fields snaking through the village had dwindled to a sluggish trickle. Its source in the low hills had been choked by a rockslide a month prior, and the late summer was unforgivingly dry. What little water remained was now the source of a bitter dispute.
Bhadra, a farmer whose fields were closest to the source, had grown desperate. His rice shoots, once green and proud, were turning the color of straw. In the night, he had taken his two strong sons and built a crude but effective dam of rock and packed earth, diverting the stream's last lifeblood entirely into his own irrigation channels.
His gain was every other family's loss.
"It is not right, Bhadra," said an old woman, her face a web of righteous anger. "My vegetables wither on the vine. Are my children to go hungry so your rice may grow?"
Bhadra stood opposite the council, his jaw set, his arms crossed over his chest. He was not a cruel man, but fear had made him selfish. "I took what the gods gave near my land," he argued, his voice rough. "When the stream flowed for all, I shared. When it shrinks to a thread, is it not a test? Am I to watch my family's future perish while I bow to a tradition meant for times of plenty?"
Vishnuyasha held up a hand, his calm a small island in the rising tide of anger. "There is no 'your land' or 'my land' in Shambhala, brother. There is only our land. There is no 'your water,' only the water that sustains us all. The Dharma of this village is interdependence."
"Dharma does not fill an empty belly," Bhadra retorted.
The words hung in the air, heavy and poisonous. It was the first time Kalki had ever heard Dharma used as an obstacle rather than a path. The unity of Shambhala, its most precious treasure, was cracking. He watched his father's face, saw the lines of pain around his eyes, and a deep, ancient protectiveness stirred in his own small chest. He knew, with a certainty that was as natural as breathing, a dozen ways to solve this.
He could summon a localized rain, drenching Bhadra's fields and his alone, making his dam redundant. He could whisper a command to the rocks, and the dam would crumble to dust. He could fill the hearts of the council with such unshakeable wisdom that Bhadra would weep with shame and beg forgiveness.
He could. But the memory of his father's words, spoken every night before sleep, was a gentle but absolute chain. "We are here to serve, my son. Not with power, but with our hands. A gift given by force is no gift at all."
The Free-Will Covenant. Even at five, he understood it. It was the first rule of his existence. He looked down at his own small, soft hands. They seemed terribly inadequate.
Later that afternoon, Kalki slipped away from his mother's watch. He didn't go toward the arguing adults, but upstream, following the dry, cracked earth of the main channel.
He felt the world with a clarity that was both a blessing and a burden. He felt the thirst of the soil under his bare feet. He felt the silent scream of the wilting crops. He felt the knot of fear in Bhadra's heart, and the simmering resentment in the hearts of his neighbors. They were all threads in a tapestry of suffering, and he was born to reweave it. But with what loom?
He arrived at the crude dam. It was an ugly thing, a wound of greed on the landscape. Beyond it, Bhadra's fields were a tapestry of desperate green. Below it, a parched and dying land. The injustice of it was a sharp, physical ache.
For a moment, he let his awareness expand. He felt the deep, hidden aquifers dreaming of rain far beneath the earth. He felt the humid promise of the monsoon, weeks away, gathering over the distant ocean. He could touch it, summon it, command it. A flick of his will was all it would take.
He closed his eyes. A gift given by force is no gift at all.
He would not be a storm. He would be an invitation.
His gaze traveled higher up the hill, above the rockslide that had started the problem. There, hidden beneath a tangle of ferns and ancient stone, he sensed it. A tiny seep of water, a forgotten spring no bigger than his fist, weeping moisture into the moss. It was pure, clean, and utterly insufficient.
An idea bloomed in his mind. It was a child's idea, simple and playful. A game.
He clambered up the rocky hillside until he reached the hidden spring. The air was cool and smelled of damp stone and growing things. He knelt, scooping his small hands into the moss to clear a space, creating a small pool of crystal water. He then took a large, sturdy arum leaf and, with the patient focus of a boy crafting a toy, folded it into the shape of a simple boat.
He placed the leaf-boat in the tiny pool. It floated, green and perfect.
This was his vessel. The intent was his cargo. His goal was not to water the fields. It was to heal the village. He dipped a single finger into the water, and whispered to it, a soundless vibration of will. Flow for everyone. Not for one. For everyone.
He used a stick to clear a tiny channel in the dirt, a path just wide enough for the trickle from the spring to follow. He guided his little leaf boat along the new current, humming a tuneless song his mother had taught him. He wasn't performing a ritual; he was playing a game of bringing water home.
His path did not lead toward the dammed channel. It wound down the other side of the gentle slope, aiming directly for the village square.
As he worked, a strange thing began to happen. The trickle from the spring did not strengthen into a magical torrent. It remained a trickle. But it flowed with an unusual persistence. The parched earth did not seem to drink it up; the water glided over the surface as if the ground were already quenched. His little leaf-boat sailed steadily onward.
Another child, a girl named Leela, saw him. "What are you doing, Kalki?" she asked, her curiosity piqued.
"I'm taking the water to the thirsty houses," he said, his voice earnest and bright. "The old temple well is almost dry."
It seemed a wonderful game. Leela found her own leaf and ran to join him. Soon, another boy, and then two more, saw the game and joined in. A small gang of children, laughing and chattering, clearing a path for the tiny, obedient stream, their collective innocence a shield against the tension of the adult world. They were not solving a drought. They were having an adventure.
The combined Dharma of their simple, helpful joy was a potent catalyst. The spring did not gush, but the trickle became a steady, generous ribbon of water.
Their path brought them to the edge of Bhadra's land. He heard the sound of their laughter and came out from his house, his face a mask of wary anger. He expected to find them trying to tear down his dam.
Instead, he saw his own son among them, happily digging a channel beside Kalki. He saw them guiding a fresh stream of water away from his fields, past his dam, toward the village that he had cut off. They weren't stealing his water; they were bringing their own.
Bhadra stared. He looked at the joyous, communal effort of the children. He looked at their bright, purposeful faces, intent on their task of mercy. Then he looked at his dam—a sullen, selfish pile of rocks that stood in opposition to everything he was witnessing. It was a monument to his fear. The children's tiny stream, born of play and shared purpose, was a living lesson.
Shame, hot and sharp, washed over him. His actions, which had seemed so justified by desperation, now looked ugly and small in the clear light of their game.
He strode past the children without a word. He walked to his dam. He didn't say a word as he began, with his own hands, to pull the rocks away. His sons, seeing their father, wordlessly joined him. The dam came down faster than it was built.
The water, liberated, rushed into its old channel. It met and merged with the children's little stream. When Vishnuyasha and the council arrived, drawn by the sudden silence, they found Bhadra standing ankle-deep in the flowing river, his head bowed, the water washing the dirt from his hands. They found the children laughing as the reunited stream flowed strong and clear toward everyone, its song returned to Shambhala.
Vishnuyasha found Kalki sitting quietly by the bank, watching his leaf boat spin in a newly formed eddy. The boy looked up at his father and smiled, a simple, happy smile.
But Vishnuyasha saw what others did not. He saw the divine wisdom behind the childlike game. He saw the unimaginable power that chose to manifest as a trickle of water and a whispered suggestion. His son had not commanded the river. He had taught it, and the village, the path of Dharma. And it was a lesson that had cost no one their free will.
The weight and wonder of his purpose settled on Vishnuyasha again, heavier than any mountain. He knelt and put a hand on his son's small shoulder. "It is time to come home," he said, his voice thick with emotions for which there were no names.
How do you teach a god about a world of limits when he has just shown you that the only true limit is a lack of compassion?