It was then that he realized that somewhere between the corridors of the palace and the matted earth of Dandakaranya, two chapters of his life had been seamlessly sewn together.

That somewhere along all of it, he had gotten used to the open breeze of the hut, and automatically reaching to the top shelf when Sita asked for the berries, and unconsciously patting the walls when it rained too hard.

Yet still, somehow, he remembered from palace times to close the drapes at nighttime (did it matter if they were of silk or banana leaf?) because they didn't want the birds to fly in unbidden.

And each time, Ram still found himself reluctantly thinking as he drew the curtains, that would it be so bad if they woke up to a sparrow cooing a morning lullaby to them?

The birds were the same ones that Maa Kaushalya had told him about, and he was the same Ram. He was still the same Ram who could reach the top shelf when Sita smiled at him, and who yearned for birds to sing to him over any court musician.

The sparrows flew between the bellowing branches of Dandakaranya and the pristine palaces of Ayodhya, willing to distribute their song equally wherever they went. And perhaps they carried the strings of him in their beaks that threaded the two halves of his life together.

He was still the same Ram and he knew he would always be the same Ram no matter if he couldn't wear a crown or sit on a throne.

Except now he was a Ram that knew how to build a forest hut and what trees the deer liked weaving through and how the sun enjoyed dancing through shadowed leaves on certain spring days.

Back and forth from the kingdom to the trees, he imagined pieces of himself being carried to where he sat now. The songbirds who were always the same, no matter if they spent some time in Kosala or Chitrakut.

He was a collection of all the Rams he had ever been, if a little different each moment. He couldn't be divided up into sections, because he was a blend of everything! He carried Ayodhya with him, and when he returned there, he would store a bit of this forest too.

Sitting on the front steps of his hut, drinking in the paradise before him, it was then that he realized that he didn't remember when the trill of the forest had become so natural to him. Or when he had learned to expect plush earth instead of cool marble under his feet.

And that sometimes changes weren't numbered and structured like volumes of a book but blurred into each other like sunlight seeping into the Earth.

Everything had changed and yet nothing had changed at all. It was still the same life going and going.

"What are you thinking about, Chandra?" Sita asked, and Ram looked to where she stood in the doorway of their hut, holding a pot to her hip.

There was another thing that would never change. Sita.

Ram patted the step next to him. "Oh, just about the birds that still sometimes get into the window even if we close the curtains."
Sita hummed happily, stepping down. "It's just like Ayodhya, isn't it?"

Ram turned to look at her and smiled.

Bonus Scene:

Lakshman watched them lean into each other and rolled his eyes. "And this is just like Ayodhya too," he grumbled, dropping the firewood like hot coals and strolling back into the forest. "They keep on banishing me from my own hut."

He glared at the sparrow that sung a tease from the highest branches of a tree. "Don't rub it in."