A memory flashed into her mind, when her mother had taken her to the temple of the Great Mother Goddess, to get a blessing of divination, from the Oracle.

The temple that smelled of camphor and old wood, held the device of enlightenment. It was a large rectangular wooden block encased in a glass box that was nearly 2 story tall. A huge elongated triangle was carved into it. In it wooden dowels were filled to form a labyrinth of dowels. The bottom of the triangle had cylindrical glass containers set close together, that rose to the height of a small child. At the top, the tip of the triangle had a huge glass funnel through which prayer balls which were tinged silver blue with the magic of the devotee looking for a divination and small white ivory balls were dropped into the triangle. The prayer balls or wish balls joisted with each other and the white ivory balls as they descended and made their way through the labyrinth of dowels until they dropped into the containers below. The Oracle and other soothsayers, stood in a semicircle around the device and made predictions based on the path of the prayer balls and where they dropped.

While her mother was purchasing her prayer ball, the small Chira found a small white ivory ball that rolled toward her. She had very little magic inside her, but she copied her mother and inserted a bit of her magic into the ivory ball. Then when her mother handed her prayer ball to the monk in charge, Chira solemnly handed her ivory ball too. Nobody bothered much as the ivory ball was a default ball often lying around and was not used for reading. But to humor the child, the monk in charge, they took it solemnly and put it along with her mother’s wish ball, into the large funnel above the glass case.

As the balls were put into the funnel and made their way to the labyrinth of dowels below, Chira through her chaotic eyes could follow the ball and see its path. It had collided with two other balls at random before being thrown completely off the triangle of dowels. Not touching the dowels even once on its downward journey, it missed the containers kept to catch the balls, and without any hindrance it landed in a corner. Then it somehow managed to find a small gap in the huge glass casing and escape out of the enlightenment device.

Right now, in the middle of the Great Oorfan, being battered and swept away by the raging water, she could now see the similarity between this small table raft and the white ball. By a matter of chance her little raft missed being crushed in the violent waters, but was ultimately heading to the bottom. Chira felt depressed!

She had honestly wanted to save them, the little child and the man. These two, that she had unwittingly rescued. But instead she had now dragged them to their doom along with her. She held on to one of the broken legs of the table as she looked at the raging river with a guilty fascination as they bumped around the rapids. A Fading sound of ringing bells in the air was quickly eaten by the magical pressure and the sound of the brutal water around her. It was perhaps from a temple from a passing village. How many towns and villages had they crossed? Where they still even in Andon? Or in the kingdom of Nara. She did not know how much time had passed. The only reason the little table was not in pieces was because of the unbreakable formation weaved into it, that was powered by the stone in the center. It was a coincidence of sorts that happens only once in a million where their little table moved like a little leaf caught in the currents unable to find a shore and managing to survive the ravaging river by just luck.

Her plan in the beginning was to use the table raft to get to a shore and escape from there, leaving the man and the child to do their own escaping. She did not factor in the river currents or the effect of the great Oorfan on the storm drain and the river. This was all because of her ignorance and lack of imagination. But it was not her fault that she had grown up in a place devoid of water bodies that were more dangerous than rabid great wild beasts. The rivers and water bodies that moved at all, were that in wood etched pictures, that showed elegant swan boats across calm waters that had even waves at equal intervals and were occasionally sprinkled with reeds and lotuses.

All of her memories were of her growing up in Lear a small mining town at a corner of the Kali desert in the border of the kingdom of Pali, one of Nara’s neighbors. It was a dry and hot most of the year, unprotected from the hot winds that blew in from the desert that seem to suck up and moisture.

The only plant Chira had ever seen was the Lear trees, that gave the town its name. It was an extremely hydrophobic tree that looked for most of its life cycle like a dead petrified tree or a pole with branches. A few months in the year the town and the desert experienced heavy fog and mist. During this time the tree shriveled and curled up becoming a shrub. On its surface, it grew sharp spiny leaves that gave the tree the appearance of a large hairy caterpillar. On its branch grew fruits that looked like insect eyes with their milky translucent flesh through which you could see its seeds. The fruit smelt something awful. But a few healers diligently plucked a few as its essence was a powerful aphrodisiac.

In such a water less place, the only water source  was the underground lake called ‘Pata-la’.

There were stories that in ancient times, when the lake was above the ground, this land was said to be rich and prosperous, under the generosity of a lake as large as the sea. Her ancestors were mighty warriors who could wield strong magic. They fought in a great magical battle that went on for years. The mother goddess got angry at the quarreling humans and caused an earthquake that sunk the lake to the underworld. The lake got renamed to Pata-la (meaning underworld), while the land above became a desert. Since then the Kali desert existed with its only lake, spread deep underground.

This was the only large body of water that Chira had seen other than the bucket of water she used to wash herself once a week. Of course, she could not see the whole lake, but a small part. This she saw when her master took her once in 6 months to check and service the mechanical pumps that fed water to the world above. Her tiny body as a child was useful to get to small places that an Adult could not reach. On those trips, all she saw through the light on her forehead was lot of darkness and water that was steady and hardly moving, and felt the heady scent of moisture and underwater life overwhelming her.

This much of violent and unstoppable force of water and even the rain falling from above was beyond her imagination. It was terrifying beyond belief.