Noncompetitive

The shuttle sped across silk threads on the loom, the beater  rhythmically clacking forward and pulling back to continue the long  process of making a saree. It's rhythmic clacking filled Mina's house,  the gaps filled in with a droning on with some men talking about some  affairs in Ranchi that effected nobody outside the city limits.

It was nice to dwell on, or ignore, problems that weren't yours.

"Mami!" Oh. Of course she was back. Usha had left her night clothes. Mina simply kept on shuttling as if she hadn't heard.

"MAAAAMI"  She was closer - it would have been easy enough to keep calling from  the door, but the thump of something on the couch made that an  impossibility.

"Mami," Usha whispered in her ear.

"What,"  Mina allowed the loom to slow the slightest bit, "You can do your  homework here if you need to - or are you staying another night?"

"There  is no homework today. Or... not much. No, look at this," She shoved a  flier, black and white and neon yellow, into her aunt's face, "Abhay  from school says I'm sure to win."

"Does he?" her head drew back  from the sheet a few centimeters to see it was another yoga competition -  her neck extending oddly in a way human's necks don't, wiggling her  nose to adjust her glasses the slightest bit. "If they can't afford to  print in color - well, if does look like they're trying to start  something. And?" Surreptitiously she reached and turned down the radio.

"And you've done this stuff before, right? You'll sponsor me, right?"

"Oh.  Money." She turn her head at an odd angle to study her niece. Or at  least give a worried look, "I'll think about it - but I have to finish  this," She took the flier and put it on the table by the radio - and her  neck snapped back to normal proportions, "You know where the toy box is  if you have nothing else to do."

~

Usha  tried to study. And by try, I mean grabbed one of her aunt's pillows  and she stared at a hindi text for a while - something about some queen  gloriously fighting British. There was too much glorious fighting. It  was weird they still had this with the militia issues lately.

Toybox.  Right. A few marionettes lay on top - if they had clothes at some  point, they were gone. She tried in vain for a few minutes to try and  get one of them to do yoga, but it just didn't want to move like that.  There were some old tin things that were overdue for cleaning. And..  board games.

"Mami, can we play pachisi?"

It was a long moment of wooshing before the response came, "OK, set it up."

There  was no room to sit right by the loom, the old radio on one side and the  wall on the other, so Usha pulled her pillow over set up on the floor  out of a normal arm's reach. Not that her aunt's arms had any trouble  reaching. They made a few moves, each, back and forth across the  unrolled fabric board, until Mina started fretting over a specific  thread that didn't want to behave. Usha tried to get creative as she  waited for her aunt to remember the game - stretching a bit, then trying  to take her turn in awkward ways, moving pieces by clasping thenm in  between her toes, first as she sat, then eventually resting on her chest  and dangling her feet over her shoulders to do so.

Her aunt didn't seem to notice, just glancing at the board and rolling the die when she remembered to.

Usha  did a few other stretches, seeing if she could get her aunt's attention  - pulling her legs up into the teardrop of a Dhanurasana, balancing on  her hands and gingerly bringing a a foot across to the other elbow in  Maksikanagasana - a few leg sweeps that she wasn't sure of the name of.  But they had to have names. Pretty much every move you saw did. It was  annoying to think that nothing she could do was really unique.

It was also annoying that her aunt was completely engaged in her threads again.

Usha  tenatively tossed a game pice to get her attention. It was batted away,  with no other response. She threw a handful, ad they too were batted  away, all at once, her aunt's arm twisting like a whip to incercept  them. She was paying attention.

"Mami - do you think you could be spun as thin as silk?"

"Not comfortably."

"Because think of how much money you could make if you wove yourself into a saree. You could-"

Usha got a firm slap on the head as her answer, "You sell your work. Not yourself."

"Rent? If she tries to steal you if could like - wrap tight around her and walk her right to the police."

Mina merely scoffed and continued with her work, "Did you finish your homework?"

"No."

"Stop putting it off. "

Usha  dragged her pillow back to the couch, opting to look though Math.  Tomorrow's math. Damn it, MORE Algebra. Why would you get so many tables  and so few chairs. These question writers really should THINK about  these things. How could she stand the noise of that loom all day.

Maybe...  she could just slip in and... Usha grabbed a handful of game pieces and  snuck around her unwary aunt, first keeping to the wall and then to the  blind spot under the loom. She'd been there before, but still let  herself watch the threads lifting back and forth for a while, dancing  their little dance until they were locked in place for eternity - ok,  maybe the "becoming a saree" suggestion was a pretty boring one in the  end.

But the moving thread leaft a tempting  enought target. The bigger game pieces - oversized buttons really - were  easy enough to flick into the gap between threads. It took skill to not  have them be caught part way through, though. And even more skill to  not get caught.

But, as the threads shifted - the first button  did get caught. She reached around, trying to knock it lose before her  aunt noticed - but the beater had already stopped, her aunt's too-fresh  face and too-tired eyes glaring at her.

"If I feed you will you behave?"

~

It  wasn't poori. The rice was seasoned pretty heavily. The bamboo shoots  were rubbery, probably boiled multiple times. It was food, though.

~

After the pair ate, Mina opted to go though the newspaper form a perch on the couch, rather than return to the loom. She did allow her niece to choose a music station on the radio.

Civics.  "Confronting Marginalization" Oh, that must be great, deciding you  could do something to help the marginalized. "Mami - remember that story  about the Bram..." - oh. She had dozed off. Aunt Mina was still sitting  up, but.. oozing a little bit. It was creepy. She tried to lay  her Aunt on her side, so she'd stop looking like a wax figure seriously  considering a full-on melt. It didn't work. Her nek looked better, but  her limbs still flopped to the floor.

Had Usha  had been younger, this might have been particularly fun - staying indoors  any playing with her aunt rather than going out in the sun and playing  in the mud by the stream. Not the thought of molting her hands into  unrecognizable shapes seemed... wierd. Even if she was comfortable about  joking about that sort of thing.

She spent a while practicing  her braiding on her aunt's long grey hair. Just so she wouldn't be sitting  there staring. Wondering just what her aunt was capable of. Wondering if  she'd even want that talent if she could have it. Did he aunt even like  being boneless? was it just a weird burden at this point? Usha tried to  convince herself she might have asked these questions aloud if her aunt  wasn't asleep. But it felt wrong to ask. Just like it felt wrong to ask  how yoga was supposed to feel if she was supposed to be a nobody.

And yet...

Usha  took the long braid of hair and passed it around to the front, took the  too-soft arms and started weaving them into a larger braid. Flesh  squished thinner under the tension, even as her hair held fast. when the  braid was long enough, hips were easy enough to work in, twisting  around impossibly, until hand and feet poked out.

And yet how did  she imagine her aunt not being like this? How did she imagine her aunt  being a winkled old lady as tired as her mother seemed to be?

Oh... she probbaly should have taken off those glasses. Those were just... glasses.

Grabbing  the flier, Usha settled down on the floor, somehow more comfortable  with her braided aunt behind her. She couldn't imagine her family being  any different... but she could have plans for herself.