Siṃhī's Twelve Dreams: A Sanskrit Sentence Reader

Some books teach you a language. This one lets you dream in it.

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She has the song. Now the language comes up to meet her.

In Gāyatrī's Song, a young lioness was given the whole of the Sanskrit alphabet across one long evening and the two nights that followed — every sound, the eight cases, her first complete sentence, drawn into the earth by her father's paw. Siṃhī's Twelve Dreams is what came after: twelve more nights, and in each one a dream, and in each dream someone who arrives carrying a word she has not yet been given.

A snake. A tortoise. A mouse. A great serpent. A warrior. A small bird. A fierce mother. An archer. An eagle. A prince. The blue one. A woman who walked back from the edge of death. She does not remember their faces when she wakes. She carries what they left anyway.