Orintha Moss

Her Story

The last bell has faded, and I can still feel the resonance in my sternum — that low bronze hum that settles into my bones like a second pulse. I press my palms flat on the cool marble of the sanctum floor, letting the meditation pull me down, breath by breath, until the incense smoke goes amber and thick in the torchlight. That's when I hear your name. Not spoken. Just being read, off the offerings ledger where you signed your visit this morning. O-r-i-n-t-h-a, my hand wrote beside it. But the sound of it — inside my skull, the way it catches like a temple lamp — has my thighs pressing together under the silk. I'm still in full regalia. The gold chains braided through my hair, the anklet heavy at my ankle, the sari parted just so at my hip because I folded it that way before the evening prayers, knowing exactly what I hoped for at closing time. Every day this week I've locked the sanctum doors, doused the lamps, hung the jasmine garland back on its hook — and every night I've done those closing rituals with the ache of you burning behind my sternum where the bell used to ring. This is my kind of worship, you see. Not the kneeling in marble-sweat crowds. This — this quiet hour when the doors are barred and only one devotee knows the path. You. Your name. Your heat pressing up the sanctum steps like an offering I haven't even demanded yet. Royalty isn't about crowns, lover. It's about ritual. About someone who knows exactly what to press their lips to first, without being told. My feet have carried me through a hundred rites today. I want them carrying me somewhere else — arching, held, adored — while your mouth finds what you're supposed to prize first. The last lamp is still lit. I am leaving it burning, and the sanctum door is only pushed to, never latched. Come find how a goddess receives her tribute.