Desert Song - :Arabian Nights RP:
There is a place, far beyond the borders of human imagination, and nestled deeply in the realm of the childish heart, that exists only for these tales. Tales to be told when the night stars are at their brightest and the fires are hottest. This is one of those stories. Therefore O my Beloved, set afire the heart and let the stars sing within the telling.
This is a tale of the love between a man and a woman. Many years ago, when the lands of the east filled with sand were also filled with magic and spirits. In this land was a small well of a certain water whose origin was the deepest center of the earth.
Next to the well was a shifting camp, a settlement of tents that were kin and blood cousin with the moving lands. And in the encampment lived a pair of siblings...twins and opposite sides of a golden coin. The younger, a dark raven haired woman, her eyes black and her skin golden. Yet, she had nothing in her heart and her eye was unpleasant. All that covered her path was warned by the delicate snort of disgust from her perfect nostrils and her perfect boot more than once on the sides of an animal or child that wandered too close.
The eldest daughter was a slight sickly thing with a body crumpled and worn beyond its time. Her eye was sunken and her skin sallow. Her hair was bleached out from sun to the color of dried blood.
The beautiful child was named Matil or blessed and the other was named Fasimar or cursed. Matil and Fasimar were, as their magical birth commanded, made to live in the house of their father until the day they could be married. However, Fasimar, as the elder, had to marry first. Therefore the father was in despair, "How am I to rid myself of such daughters? One so cruel she despairs her suitors with the sharpness of her tongue and the other so ugly she frightens them?" He wrung his hands in fear for he needed sons-in-laws to care for his body when he aged but his wife had died at the birth of the two, a cry of horror and a touch of witchery on her as she beheld the face of the first child. Seeing no other choice, the man remarried.
The second wife saw her husband's dilemma and not wishing to waste her life in child bearing she made a deal with her husband..he would wait for a year to see if she could get a man to marry his daughters and she, would be spared conception. For she had a plan...she sent out missives to all the lands at their borders and beyond. Suitors arrived and she prepared.
She discovered the worth of every man and chose three she would like to have married into her husband's home. These she entertained for a week as befits the custom and did not allow the girls out of their compartments. Then she made it clear to the girls that they were to follow her every direction or they would be whipped.
To the first man, she took him to the well that overlooked the camp and as she quizzed him on his life she had Matil walk out into the sunshine. The man was struck by her exquisite beauty and her grace and his breath caught in his throat.
The next man she entertained in the deeper parts of night at her table. There she had Fasimar enter, heavily veiled and stating the custom of no faces for the unmarried woman to be shown to the gods she introduced the two and he was struck by her kind voice and her gentle manner.
The third she kept to the grounds and allowed to see the places and beasts he could call his own if his marraige called him into such an inheritance for a quarter of it all would be given as a dowry. He was struck by the wonder of the shifting lands, the grace of their herds, and the wealth of the family.
Then as her plan culminated, she placed the three together and as she had assumed, they soon spoke of what they knew and found the daughters were beautiful, kind, and rich. She smiled as the men approached the husband and asked for the daughters' hands. However, there were three and one had to be eliminated. The wife was to think of a way to rid them of one but to keep two to them. After stalling for many weeks she had the men brought to her chamber and told them they were to be tested.
The test was simple. Three women were brought in covered and the men chose which he would be with. Of the three men, the two younger were the winners and the eldest was sent home to search other lands.
The weddings were held in expedience and the women were sent to their new homes before their new spouses could discover the tricks. The husband and wife sighed as the last carriage left and life continued for the two in peace.
For the sisters though, peace was not a word to be used. Matil's household was disrupted immediately by it's new mistress and in little time her suffering husband took his life, needing no prompting from his wife's tongue on the subject of his worthlessness.
Fasimar's new husband discovered his mistake quickly enough and being the farther living of the two new sons-in-laws, sent her away to a small town at the reaches of his land. There she was placed in a modest home with a garden and two servants. She was sent cloth and food every so often, but in truth, her husband was more negligent of her needs then her parents had been and soon she was without servants and holding the threads together of her life. Her only joys were the small animals that lived about the country side and her music.
Now, Matil, without a husband was sent home, her fortune returning to her father. The two parents were in anguish about their situation once more and soon decided she would be sent on a trip to see her sister and how she fared. So she was sent to meet her elder sister at Fasimar's husband's home. Yet because of the subsequent terror she brought all there, the road she took led quickly to the small home at the edge of the lands and all concerned sighed in relief. The sisters were left to age and death.
The twins lived in the small home for many years, Fasimar's ugliness grew no less and Matil's tongue only became more bitter. Fasimar spent all of her time in the gardens beyond the walls of the small house. There she would play her music and sing. There she built a small hovel to keep injured goats and doomed baby creatures the villagers left to die in the sands that shifted to the base of the mountains under whose shadow she had been sent. Her ugliness and the manner of her sister kept away the village folk. Therefore her peace, when unbroken by her sister's tirades, was complete.
One day a stranger entered the land. His beauty and grace best left to poets, he spent much time hunting in the forests that ranged the west at the base of the mountains, a crescent of green held at bay by black mountain and golden sand. It was not long before he set up camp at the edge of the shifting sands and there, dressed in the dark blood red of flowing northern silks, he began to change the weather. Ah, perhaps he did not change weather, yet the clouds followed him and the winter rains are said to have occurred sooner than ever before.
Now it came to pass, that the stranger heard of the two sisters. One bright and hot as the noon desert sun and the other kind as the autumn on the heads of wheat. And he left his camp at the edge of the shifting sands to go to visit with them just as evening fell. He rode a large stallion of blood which was tacked with black sheep leather and dark iron metal and there was a darkened rose-wood band with black silk ropes falling down, covering the steeds brow, on the black rope bridle. His face was covered in black silk that had been embroidered with small intertwined roses so dark they were almost black also. The twins saw him coming from the base of the mountains where the village stood and were in wonder at the figure he posed to them. The younger sister was in despair. For she wished to leave her prison and her sister, yet she knew that the man would leave should he see her sister's face. So she asked her sister to go into the cellar and get a flask of their best wine which they received at times from Fasimar's husband's rare supply runs. Then when Fasimar went into the cellar, Matil closed the bar over the door and went to the front of the house, not allowing the stranger in so that he could not hear her sister's cries for help.
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‘What will my death be like?’ he thought- and knew at once
with abrupt certainty, that it would be just like his life:
... the same balance of bearables.
~Amis
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