The World Forgot Her Name

They say belief is what builds gods.

But what if it’s disbelief that brings them back?

The first sign was the ants.

They didn’t crawl. They marched. Black ones, single file, in a tight, trembling line around the perimeter of my bed. Not near the food. Not near the dustbin. Just me. They circled me like I was something to guard. Or something to contain.

I told myself it was the heat. That old flat, tiles cracking like a sunburn, air holding its breath in June. It had to be the heat.

Then came the dreams.

Not mine—other people’s.

People I barely knew texted me at 3 a.m. to ask if I was okay. “I saw you in a temple,” one said. “Your hands were gold.” Another voice note—my high school teacher: “You were screaming in Sanskrit. I think it was Sanskrit. Or something older. I don’t know. I woke up crying.”

I didn’t know how to say, I don’t dream anymore.

Not since I turned twenty-two. Not since that trip to the village in coastal Kerala, where I stood in the ruins of a temple so erased, even Google Maps refused to acknowledge it. There was no signage, no shrine—just stones and silence. I had stood inside, laughing at the irony of the godless temple.

Then the earth cracked under my feet. Just a hairline fracture. But enough to remind me: nothing is still.

Since then, no dreams. Just this life. Logical, explainable, mostly forgettable.

But now—strangers weeping in sleep over visions of me? In temples that don’t exist?

It got worse.

Crows started following me. Just one at first. Then three. Then flocks. Not ominous, just…watchful. Like they were waiting for me to remember something I had promised to forget. And I have always laughed at my father, who says Crows carry ancient legacies.

And one day, while shaving my knee in the shower, I nicked myself. I watched the blood pool at the surface, warm and human. Then shimmer.

Then—

Gold.

I screamed. Of course I screamed. But the sound that left my throat wasn’t mine.

It was hers.

I don’t know who she is. Not yet. But she’s inside me. Or I’m inside her. The edges blur.

Sometimes I see her when I blink:

A woman crowned in fireflies.

A girl with saltwater in her ribs.

A shadow walking barefoot across a battlefield where no one remembers the war.

She doesn’t speak in words. She moves in urges. When I pass a cracked statue, my fingers itch. When I see injustice, my lungs burn. When I lie, my body shakes—not out of guilt, but resistance. As if a truth older than truth itself is refusing to be silenced.

They are starting to call it a miracle.

The woman who bleeds gold. The girl whose dreams colonize strangers.

Some say I’m cursed. Others, chosen. I don’t care for either.

I do not believe in gods.

But maybe gods don’t require belief.

Maybe they require a body.

A vessel.

A voice.

And now, somehow, I am all three.

She is not a deity.

She is not worshipped.

She is not drawn in oil or bathed in milk or draped in marigolds.

She is not sung about.

She was never allowed to be.

That was their first mistake.

Because now—I remember.

And so will the world.

My name is Irasa.

And I do not need your belief.

I am my own religion.