The monsoon settled over the city like a heavy, suffocating wet blanket, turning the unpaved courtyards of Shanti Sadan Orphanage into lakes of thick, reddish mud.

For three weeks following her violent bout of post-traumatic fever, six-year-old Khwahish existed in a perpetual haze of half-sleep and muted gray shadows. The antibiotic injections administered by the visiting compounder had defeated the infection threatening her facial wound, but the healing process left behind an itch that felt deep, constant, and maddening. Beneath the coarse linen bandaging that was changed every few days by an indifferent nurse, the deep jagged slash was forming a thick, raised, dark purple ridge of tissue—a permanent mark stretching across her small eyebrow, over the bridge of her nose, and down into the soft flesh of her cheek.