Draft

Indrani always had a good sense of smell. Her father was the second son of a landlord. In spite of that, she has grown up poor. Her father had been a farmer almost all his life. So indrani's sense of smell helped her father a lot. She could smell rain even days before cloud gathered. So,her villagers used to call her a gift of Goddess Amman. But she was not only good at forecasting the weather. She could smell someone miles away. Once she told her father that her uncle smelled, seven days later, her uncle's rotten dead body of 3 days was found. So some said she could smell death. But now she doesn't have much sensitivity to smell.

But the night after the 1st day of the hunt, her sense of smell increased in a thousand-fold. She had a severe headache from sunset. The smell of hunted animals, rotten blood, sweat of the hunters, the metals of arrow, and oil of calotropis over the arrow overwhelmed her. With the increasing darkness of the night, each breath she took started suffocating. At midnight, she ran out of harem towards the forest of Olonkar. She ran for hours, and finally, when she stopped, she realized she was lost in a forest full of ferocious beasts.

She was out of breath, shivering with the night breeze. Suddenly, she smelled a strong musky smell. It wasn't a smell she was used to. The smell was getting stronger each second. She was worried that it might be a wild animal. But by the time she understood it was an animal, and she ran towards a tree to climb, her saari got stuck to something. Suddenly, she was thrown over.She heard a voice into her, " Indrani rani, deep dark forest isn't considered safe. Why have you come unguarded?"

She opened her eyes and found herself on the top of a tree as tall as a mountain held by the young man she met injured. She couldn't smell any blood on him. He didn't smell like human. He didn't have any scent. She asked ," Leave me.What are you doing?"

He pointed down towards a growling cheetah.That didn't make sense to her. The forest of Olonkar holds no home to cheetah. How did he pull her to the top of the tree in a blink of eye?

Indrani Rani wasn't aware of the fact that cheetah can climb trees.

- How did you pull me up....

- We are short on time Rani, may be next you'll get the answer.

She was kind of offended, she looked at his eyes . His eyes were glowing in the moonlit night. Her time stopped and it resumed when she found herself in her bed again .

The next morning, she became a widow. The king of Sonali was found dead in her slumber. She had adorned herself in white and went to see the her husband for the last time. And seeing him for the last time,she felt something wasn't right.

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