They told their daughter the night before departure, once the day's preparations had wound down and the small lodging had gone quiet enough for the conversation to actually land properly, Sekar kneeling to meet her eyes the way she always did for news that mattered.
"Mama and Papa both have to go somewhere for a while," Sekar said. "Somewhere considerably farther than Wanagiri. You'll stay here, in the capital, where it's safe."
Their daughter's face did the careful work of processing this, the same deliberate stillness she brought to anything genuinely difficult, and for a moment Rama thought she might cry, braced himself for it, ready to promise anything that might ease it. She didn't cry. She simply looked between them both, weighing something with a seriousness that made her seem, in that instant, considerably older than four.
"Is it because of the cold ones?" she asked.
