[Tadhana]

Kali was utterly and completely drained. Today ended her absolutely grueling week of intensive training at her aunt's home, punishment for being repeatedly late for training. While her siblings had been meditating, she had been dunked under water, endured being hit by high pressures of watter, went through extreme temperatures and varying degrees and levels of water "training". Water torture more like it, she was convinced. She almost drowned or died of hypothermia in the midst of training on a few occasions that week. Needless to say, she was exhausted physically as well as mentally.

After she was released from the torture chamber that was her aunt's house, she hitched a ride with one of her many relations in the city and was dropped off at the library. She wasn't that much of a bookworm, but she loved the library because of its quiet and solitude. Living with several siblings and some cousins in one house, one didn't get any privacy, peace or quiet. Going home was the last thing she wanted after feeling almost every muscle in her body cry out in pain as she was sure she won't be getting any rest there. Besides, the library had beanbags.

Admittedly, she did like to read things other than celebrity gossip and fashion magazines, as evidenced by the books of costume history and art that she had picked out before heading to the nearest bean bag and plopping herself on it with a sigh of relief. If she had looked a little to the left, she would have noticed an almost familiar head of red hair there, indulging himself in a book or two. But since this is Kali, she was already engrossed in her own choice of literature, earphones already stuck in her ear.