A String Of Pearls

Settling in

"You can't be any worse than him." Duryodhan scoffed. "All his sons so far are named 'something-sena'. Like. We know you love fighting. But who names all their sons as 'something-army'. Vrishasena literally means 'strong army'. Your eldest son won't be happy with you once he's grown up a bit. None of them will."

"Oh shut up." The King of Anga groaned. "That one was Vrushali's idea not mine. We panicked about the name and she decided to combine two of mine- 'Vrisha' as some people have decided to call me for some reason, and 'Vasusena'. It's not my fault."

Duryodhan chortled and Bhanumati smirked. "He will be even more upset if he hears that. Tell him the Strong army thing instead."

Angaraj looked at her helplessly. "Don't you start now as well." He threw up his hands. "Fine. Fine. The river Champa flows through the city. So I rename Malinipuri as Champa."

"You can't name the city after the river! It will cause confusion."

"I don't care." The King of Anga declared. "I will also make it my Capital."

"You will make the city Jarasandh gifted you, your capital?" Bhanumati asked, surprised.

"Yes." Angaraj smirked. "It will be a reminder of his defeat and will keep him from ever going back on his promise."

Alright she had not thought of that. She could admit to being somewhat impressed. Speaking of which...

"Shouldn't you go inform Pitashree and Pitamaha of these developments? That Hastinapur won't have to fend off any more attacks from Magadh?"

Duryodhan smacked his forehead. "Look at us, completely forgetting the thing we had come to do, like absolute idiots . Come on Karna. Thank you darling." He threw the last part at her and dragged Karna away after dropping a sudden kiss on her forehead.

She blinked in surprise.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was about a month after their marriage that Bhanumati first met the Queen of Anga.

The King of Anga visited with his four children and his wife who was pregnant.

"I was not well." She told Bhanumati. "Or I would have visited earlier."

"I thought you had three sons." was the first thing she blurted out.

Then she turned red. Really, she could see the four boys, who said nonsense like this? They were all giving her strange looks, did they think she was stupid? No, all that was nonsense. She internally shook her head to clear it of such ridiculous thoughts.

She did have a valid reason for her thoughts after all.

"On our ride to Hastinapur, the King of Anga mentioned having three sons who could talk..." she trailed off, realising her mistake.

Three sons who could talk. The second youngest one looked about a little older than three, while the youngest boy was only a bit over one.

"Sorry." she whispered, mortified.

But her companions merely laughed sportingly.

Trying to change the topic of conversation, she asked, "So what are you going to name him? Not something 'sena' surely."

Duryodhan went into peals of laughter while The King of Anga buried his face in his hands. The Queen of Anga looked amused.

"Well, if it's a girl we're safe but if it's a boy again, no we will not name him anything 'sena' this time." She replied, grinning.