A Boon Too Big to Hold
A lone ascetic stands on one leg in a quiet forest clearing, dust on his skin from years of stillness, as a golden four-headed figure (Brahma) appears above him in a beam of light, one hand raised in blessing.
An asura named Mushika once stood in a forest for a hundred years. He ate nothing. He stood on one leg the whole time. At last came to him and offered a boon. Mushika did not ask for gold. He did not ask for a kingdom. He asked for one thing only: a body that no weapon could hurt, and no army could stop. granted it. But he gave Mushika a warning too. "A boon is a door," he said. "What you do after you walk through it is still your own choice." Mushika did not really hear the warning. He only heard that he could not be stopped. And a mind used to hunger does not know what to do with no limits, except grow. Each year his body grew a little more. Soon he was not a man anymore. He was something else — a giant rat, black-furred, red-eyed, and always hungry.
✦ Visual cue — A lone ascetic stands on one leg in a quiet forest clearing, dust on his skin from years of stillness, as a golden four-headed figure (Brahma) appears above him in a beam of light, one hand raised in blessing.