4.

As soon as Lavender has this thought—the thought that Padma is beautiful, truly beautiful in a way that Lavender or even Parvati never will be, the thought that she could lie here and look at Padma's face for hours, trying to memorize it, to comprehend the factors that determine its structure and expression—she slides out of Padma's bed as gently as she crawled into it last night, tiptoes backwards through the room and wraps her hand around the doorknob, twisting it as silently as she can and then disappearing down the hallway.

She reaches her own room, sliding through and then letting herself fall onto her bed, lying face-down and breathing harsh breaths through the pillow. She tries and fails to sort her brain into something even vaguely resembling a logical train of thought. But then, Lavender thinks, she has never really been a person that someone would term "logical."

She has never spent the night with someone like that, woken refreshed and calm and happy in the morning. There was a silence and a sigh and a release in sleeping entwined with Padma that Lavender has never known, one that upon waking she never wanted to let go of, one that she now thinks she would like to feel again.

But that thought stirs up something wild in her, something as dark and dangerous as the mysterious crashing monsoon Lavender still does not fully understand, something that spreads outward from her center until her whole body is buzzing with it. To feel Padma's hand across her stomach again, the weight of her against her back, Padma's soft whisper-breaths in her ear. Her whole head shakes with them.

Lavender sits up in bed, takes a deep breath, sets her feet on the floor, comes to a conclusion.

When Lavender walks into the kitchen an hour or so later, bracing herself, it is to see Padma and Parvati there in matching silk dressing gowns, Parvati delicately blowing on her tea and Padma gulping coffee. They both look up and smile as Lavender comes in, Parvati bright and Padma shy and a little sly, a drop of cream catching at the corner of her mouth.

As she dresses and then the day passes (and she cannot meet Padma's eye and her breath comes short whenever she tries and Parvati leans over and whispers to her that she is acting weird, what on earth is wrong with her), her resolution solidifies. By the time she goes to bed that night, Lavender thinks she knows what she wants to do, but doesn't know how to do it.

xXx

Three days later, on the night of the second storm, Lavender finds her opportunity.

This time, she is not frightened but elated by the crash of thunder and shimmer of lightning on her walls, because she knows what they mean. The flashes now provide for her a path to follow as she walks, placing her bare feet carefully, down the hall and she doesn't hesitate when she reaches the end of the hallway and two identical doors. The thunder breaks the gateway, allows her to twist the doorknob and step inside.

Padma is sitting up in bed when Lavender turns away from the now closed door. Shy again, always shy when she least expects to be, that first rush of bravery gone, Lavender stands with her hands behind her back and shrugs one shoulder up.

Padma smiles, so wide Lavender can see it even from the door, and she thinks that if she were closer, she would see Padma's eyes crinkling too, like they do right before one of her infrequent, secretive laughs. Padma lifts one shoulder in return and then holds out her hand toward Lavender.

Even Lavender, nervousness beating in her throat, cannot mistake the invitation. She walks to the bed, heels never touching the floor, and climbs onto it, settling down on her knees about a foot from Padma. She reaches out a tentative hand to Padma's shoulder, then runs one finger down the length of Padma's arm, air shuddering from her lungs as she does so. Under her finger, Padma's skin is like silk.

Then Padma grasps Lavender's hand in her own, faster than Lavender would have thought possible. She brings Lavender's hand to her mouth, kissing her palm. Her voice quiet and full of something Lavender is longing to discover and taste and know, she says, "I wondered when you would come back."

And for the first time since she arrived in India, Lavender is home.