[IC] Peregrine [Closet & Glaw]

[Glaw]

Aliyah wasn't her name, really, was it? No, she'd had another name, a silly name long ago, too long ago to remember properly with any decent sort of attachment that people should put to names. That had been a dream, or like a dream, so intangible when placed beside her own sons and daughter, her granddaughters and grandsons, the sand and the sun and the horses and the thirst and the trail of small graves. But it had been true. She was not, by blood, one of these people she held so dear. The children's name for her meant pale grandmother -- for even after a lifetime of browning sun, her fragile skin and eyes and hair still drew questions she couldn't answer.

Aliyah, so her name had always been, sat in a crooked chair by the tent flap, a knobby veined hand against the canvas while a bleary eye peeked out at the night fires. She knew the fire well, and the voices that spoke quietly in its warmth. She could name the occupants of each of the other tents, and whether they would be sleeping now, and who was having a nightmare and who would sing them lullabies. She worried for them, she loved every hair on every head, and she kissed her fingers and brushed those kisses out of the tent, wishing them all the happiness of the world. If she said goodbye they would convince her to stay.

She leaned on her walking stick, her legs creaking while she stood, and she threw a shawl around her head and shoulders with an energy unbecoming of the elderly. She pulled open a reed drawer, and for a moment she paused before drawing out of it a plain and tarnished brass key. She fondled it a moment, hoping the thin pads of her fingers might find some memory locked deep away, and she dropped it into a pocket and looked out of the tent again.

The men by the fire -- keep them safe, may they be happy! -- finally stood and walked together to tend the horses, which had begun huffing and scuffing under the strange close moon. Now was her only chance.

She stole out of the tent and rounded it, and she shuffled past the tents that held her sleeping grandchildren, blowing silent kisses as she went, until the moon greeted her round and bright in a crust of endless stars. The dunes were blue in the night. Above them, in the distance, a single craggy rock rose like a sentinel. It was toward this she walked, determined, slipping sometimes in the sand, shuffling. She would make it by morning, she thought. By the time her dear family discovered her missing they would never find her again.

[ClosetMonster]

The blue and black sands wove a world apart around the figure which crossed it, a habit of silent watching with luminous eyes and feet made both small and wide. Her steps hadn't the same delicate tread of the mouse, nor the softened slide of the viper. Instead, they broadcast to all her intentions, if not her reasons and each creature bound to the earth both hidden and crouched in the darkness made note of her in their quiet world.

Across the sands, a jackal yipped and its kits joined in. In solidarity, they heralded her coming and then, like the rest, fell to soundlessness. First the jackal and then its kits, ears pricked wide and narrow noses to the sands, trotted about one dune and up another, keeping care of where the woman was.

The bitch was darker than her kits and they were old enough to fend for themselves yet they clung to her and the last of her milk-drained teats to swallow up the last moments of community. They would make their own dens, have their own litters or sire litters, and at times, would keep in pairs, but never again would there be the panting jumble of legs where food was if not plentiful, dependable. She, however, had meant to move on, as her natural imperative, her drive to feed her own belly, had become more and more solid a need. This subtle difference from the usual, this solitary footstep on her sands was enough to make her break from them and they, as if sensing it, did their best to keep up with her in a bid to not lose her just yet.

Despite their need, youth did eventually win out and they were diverted by mere lack of will. Two at first paused at a bit of half lost scrub breaking from some windswept rocks and the last, a hundred yards beyond, sat on her haunches and made a yawning cry which her mother ignored.

The sun began to wash the darkness with violet dawn, still very much behind the shadow of the earth, and the blanket of night fled, yet the jackal kept up with the steady tred of the old woman. She, because the woman had made no attempt to deviate, had trotted ahead and sat atop the next dune, staring at the woman. With a shake, she laid on her belly and canted her head to the side in a curious pose. What was she to do with something so large, so solitary, which did not need to be harried or nibbled on? Still, it was a change and she was but a pup herself, her first litter abandoned like she had been abandoned by her mother, and such oddities like this woman were still of interest to her keen intellect.

[Glaw]

She had heard them -- a pack of them, young, a litter and their mother, calling to the moon for their supper. Aliyah did not change her pace, did not look away from the towering rock before her, now so much clearer in the gray outline of morning. They were the tricksters, her people would say -- quick to take human form, to manipulate the weak-minded to swim in their own soup pot, to steal the lioness' mane and blame it on the antelope. In reality they were merely hungry, and she was easy if leather-tough prey.

"What are you doing there?" she demanded of the jackal on the dune, one gnarled hand clutched to her shawl. She waited, but no pups came to join her -- only a mournful yowl in the distance. Anger flared in the old woman's eyes. "You terrible, selfish mother. How dare you leave your babies behind. How dare you hunt for yourself while your children are starving. I'm more than a meal for you and them together, you know it, and you don't care. You turn your back on them." She took a shuddering breath, and she set her old teeth, and she waved her walking stick like a sword. "You go back and you fetch them. You tell them that if I fail today there'll be breakfast enough for all of you, but give me the time to try. I've waited long enough. Give me time." And she set the stick in the sand and shuffled off again, aching and creaking and panting, but she could see the cavern from here.

The great stone pillar was parted like a curtain near the sand, and the old woman ran her fingers over the dusty ancient paintings on the cavern wall. They depicted great wars and winged beasts, golden temples and gods long since lost, painted by the fingers of a dead people. She shuffled slowly along the wall, lit dimly by the first glimmers of sunlight, reading the pictures as if she had a clue what they meant.

She stopped, and her breath caught in her throat. Her finger rested on a small keyhole in the wall, at the eye of a bird-god. She licked her lips, and she turned one aching foot at a time to face it, to press her eye close to it, but there was nothing but darkness, as she knew there would be. She brushed the dust away from the keyhole, and she felt its edges with a shaking finger. For fear of failure she didn't want to try; she didn't want to know whether her hopes had all been for nothing. But she took the brass key from her pocket, and she ran her thumb over it and she whispered a prayer for luck.

"Please," she whispered to the wall, "I'm sorry. Please, just this once, only this once, for a moment, whatever you think of me, let me find what's become of him. I promise I will rest in peace, only knowing. I've left everything else finished, except this. I made a promise. I promised." She slipped the key into the lock in the wall and closed her eyes. "Please."

It did not turn.

She tried turning the other way. She took it out and shoved it back in. She jiggled it and wriggled it. She stabbed the wall with it as if she might make it bleed. The key clattered to the floor, and she slid down with her back to the wall. "So that's it, then." She smiled bitterly, and she laughed, and she laid her head back and sighed, while the sun illuminated the dead pictures.

She pulled a folded letter out of her skirt pocket -- several pages long -- and she read it over, and she read it aloud, and she added a few more lines to the bottom with a stick of charcoal, but never imagined anyone would read them now. She folded the letter to her breast with the key pressed against it, and she told the story of her life to the keyhole in the wall. And when the sun had risen higher and she had finished telling the story of her beautiful, beautiful grandchildren, her crackled voice faded from the echo of the cavern for the last time, and she was still.

[ClosetMonster]

In the grand scheme of things, the fall of a single human means so very little. The winds moved sands and the sands covered her tracks, until the signs of her passing were but a moment's memory in time lost. The camp from which she'd come fell into disarray at her leaving and horsemen went in search of her. Loved ones wept and the women put ash mixed with fat upon their faces, in their hair in preparation. That she had chosen to leave was her way and even as they searched, they did not expect to find anything.

And so the river of moments and hours passed on until the camp had been gone, the jackal gone as well. Heat and cold twisted around one another and then around the great rock, half burying the woman's now deserted body and doing what the jackal did not.

His name was Zahi Akeem Gabir Hakim Amjad and he was a prince of his people. He carried the weight of his lands and as he crossed the sands on the precious Anat, her golden body streaming under the sky, he felt that given all that had happened, to carry the burden of his legacy and to let it die and be lost would not be a tragedy his father may have thought it to be. Not when such burdens were tainted by the hands of evil.

He had bled along her side and his blood crackled when it dried so that much of it had come off of her hide. This was a good thing, for she was too bright a star to be so covered in her master's blood. The wound had eventually been staunched yet to move overly much and he would no doubt have opened the cut in his belly once more. Still, they went on, he blindly and she with the wisdom of only the most beloved, until the sun was so high as to make the heavens white and pure, and then she stopped for she had brought him to some place which was cool and in the shade. He crawled off of her side and found himself in the mouth of a cavern. As he leaned against her shoulder, he drew out the water skin at her withers and letting go his side, he clasped his hands and offered her water in the inefficient bowl he had created for her. She drank as delicately as she did all, her velvet lips on his palms, and then she shook herself, her dark mane a corona of fine silks about her crest. With a groan of comfort, she laid upon the sands and trusting to him, the one she had followed even directly after her birth, she laid her head upon the cool and fell to a restful sleep.

He, however, would not sleep. Not when life was so close and death even closer. With a grunt, the man clasped his hand to his side and stepped further into the break in the stone. It grew cooler as he walked but equally difficult and he, aware he had a charge, would not allow himself full entrance. He stumbled and slowly sank to his knees, the warmth of blood seeping into his fingers once more. With a gasp, he settled into the sand and began to work at tearing away fabric and making a binding for his wound. He had not had time when he had been forced to flee because of his cousin's treachery, but he could take time with the quiet of the desert to protect his pain.

As the wound was bound tightly, Zahi took his time and leaned against the wall to rest without forgetting his charge. His dearest would sleep only a short time and then she would look over him, perhaps to his death or perhaps to his waking. Then they would be gone once more. So he remained for a time, looking out at the desert beyond and his golden mare outlined by the fierce sun.

It could be only that he had lost blood and that he was hurt that he did not notice what was under him. He shifted, however, and then something could be felt underneath, poking at his seat. He frowned and with care, moved so as to remove the rock, only to find it was a rib bone. One of a set and as he brushed sand to find what it was that lay there, he discovered the paper thin remnants of cloth, long since discolored, and the second and third of the bones, one atop the other. It was small, a woman or a child, then, and no way to tell how long it had been as the desert kept such secrets. He swept it clean but paused for there, beneath the third, a gleam of metal flashed.

His head to the side, much like the jackal had in times long past, he reached out and plucked what was soon discovered to be a key out of the earth. It had been brushed by time as well and gleamed as it were newly polished. He let it play in his fingers, forgetting for a moment his pain. A key then? Here of all places? What possibilities lay within a key?

He chuckled. What possibilities, indeed? “O, that you could give me answers,” he said to it in a hushed whisper, the key which looked to hold promise in its burnished sides. It was a pretty thing and very unlikely a find, for it had not sifted deeper into the sands to be lost. “What say you, my friend? What was your key to?” He glanced down at the bones in inquiry but then, the bones said nothing in return.

Sleep had taken him without his notice when Anat's warm breath played on his cheek. He startled awake and his hand gripped hard about the key as if loathe to lose it. Looking up, he met her dark eyes and laughed in pain. Then because she was at his side, he reached for the woven collar on her neck and she waited for him to stand. He panted, attempted to catch his breath when each intake pulled and hurt. Unsure if it was his imagination, he chose to not touch his belly and find if he bled once more. Instead, he leaned his head on her neck, his arm over her shoulder, and let the sweet scent of her carry him to safer times when, as a younger man, he had slept together with her and dreamt of glories never come to be.

Her saddle felt too far away and he did not attempt it just then. Instead he fingered the key and looked beyond her side to where the sun had begun to tinge the world in darker golds. Night would come on soon and they would be better suited to a warm fire and a secure tent, neither of which he could offer her. Instead, he would be forced to ask her to carry him further and she, dutiful daughter of the wind, would do without complaint. He sighed heavily at the care which he could not give his people and thus leveled completely upon her.

Finally standing upright, he set the key into his sash and shared water with her once more. She was not greedy nor did she begrudge him the little he took to keep himself standing. As he replaced the water skin, instead, she nuzzled him and gave him a soft whicker of camaraderie.

“Let us go,” he nodded to her and went to try to mount her. But she sidled and tossed her head.

“My lovely?” he reached for her mane. His delight allowed him the touch but the moment he attempt to mount, she again, sidled and tossed her head, this time, pawing the ground. Each time he chose to make motions toward mounting her, she would move again until he stood and set his hand on his chin, stroked his beard in thought. The pain was great and he could not have attempted many more times, but there was some purpose to her actions, for she was the wise one while he the fool.

When assured she had his attention, Anat tossed her head once more. He watched her, but she had to do so once more before he let his gaze leave her and turn to look at the wall. Faded paintings stood out on the stone, barely visible with the slanted light of the setting sun. He stepped forward and let his hand run along the lines. Here, a flying horse, there a man prostate. The images meant nothing to him but Anat had no doubt meant for him to inspect them and so he did, as obedient to her wishes as she was so often to his.

When his thumb caught on a divot, he leaned forward to look more closely. The wall had been smoothed by the deserts and any crack seemed of monumental importance. Even more so, he realized, when it looked and felt almost like a key hole. But it couldn't be!

Yet, moved to act, he did reach for the key which he had found held in that lost one's rib bones and after blowing it free of sand, found it was, indeed a key hole and in fact, fit the very key which he slotted into it. With a breath of surprise, Zahi turned the key which caught, and then slid smoothly about. As if it had only waited for someone to come along and make use of it.

[Glaw]

Dorian Foster ached with waiting. He was dying of waiting. He could hang himself with a rope of waiting, and the braiding of it would pass the time better than this. He sat now on the wooden floor with his arms on his knees, staring by the light of the vines at the mahogany door that Agatha would come back through any moment now.

Any. Moment.

There were deep white gashes in the iron-bolted door from the hours he'd spent striking it and leveraging it with a sword (which now lay in useless pieces on the floor). It was charred from the torchfire he'd set against it (an idea abandoned when the smoke filled his lungs). There was blood on the wood and on his torn fingernails. He'd have to go back through the halls for food soon, his stomach whined.

"You know," he told the door, "I don't think she's coming back." He sniffed, rubbed his nose, tipped his head. "Nah, she's left me. Found somebody sane. She's been eager for this, you know. A cruel joke." He shouted those last words as if Agatha would hear them and repent. He ran his tongue over his teeth and scrubbed his fingernails in his hair and leaped to his feet. "She'll pop in with that big innocent grin on her face and she'll have bought me a new hat and she'll make those big eyes and hell, I won't stay mad. I'm weak." He sighed and leaned back against the wall, lifted his arm, sniffed, and wheezed. His uniform had been drenched in sweat several times since he had decided Agatha was taking too long, and now the stains were deep and rank. "I'm a weak, weak man," he groaned, and he scratched at the whiskers at his chin, dreaming of a razor. For the first time in a week he considered abandoning Agatha in favor of a shower. He was bitterly proud of himself for that first step of acceptance.

But then, something clicked in the door, and all those thoughts of hatred and anger and sore smelly waiting were gone in a flood of relief. Instantly he was at the door, just as the first light shone through the seams. He picked up the biggest piece of the shattered sword, wedged it in the door and helped to pry it open, grinning through the effort, only imagining exactly what he would say to her when they finally stood face to face.

Only the face in front of him was a bit more beardy than what he was expecting.

Dorian stumbled backward, panting, the shard of sword clutched in one hand, his eyes wide as he stared at the dark intruder. He glanced once in alarm at the key, and then at the trail of blood seeping from the man's stomach, and back to that small-eyed face he didn't recognize. Slowly he put distance between them, until his back hit the wall. There were hallways to either side of him, and he knew he could outrun and lose this injured would-be attacker in the labyrinth, if necessary. He couldn't decide whether he should be helping this man or whether the intruder had sustained a wound while attacking Agatha, so he stayed where he was and watched the man's face carefully. He liked to think he was a good judge of character, and people mortally wounded, in his experience, tended to bare themselves handsomely.

[ClosetMonster]

Golden light of the Arabian sun flooded across the surface of the rock in which the keyhole stood. The dyes and pigments of what had once been paint, flared into color and Zahi could see an eye, another eye, and a great, gaping maw of what looked to be a great bird, alternately gilt and covered in blood. He let go of the key which had, as if guided by magic, turned its full rotation as smoothly as if the mechanism were newly made and newly oiled.

With the last pin in place, a seam broke out across the painted stone and a door, small enough that he might duck to enter, was visible. Zahi gazed at it for long moments. He had little use for magic outside of his precious Anat who carried the blood of her forefathers, the djinn whose winds still swept the dune tops and heralded, no – incited the storms to rise. Besides, he had miles to go, a talisman to take into the depth of an uninhabitable desert and there, to die with it and thus, keep his father's pride untarnished by bickering and bids for power.

Still, it was a door and as such, demanded that it be used, for all it seemed new enough in the turning, every other sign told a very different tale. Here, the bones of one who had been searching, perhaps, for that very keyhole. Here, a lost civilization painting their vengeful god across its surface. So bid by a power of time and tale, Zahi put aside the pang in his side, the dull ache of his life leaving, and set his bloody hand to the center and gave a heave.

The door proved to not be as smooth nor as helpful as the keyhole and it grated, complained, and gave but a little. But suddenly, it began to jerk under his hand, trying of its own accord to open. Seemingly, however, it could not do it alone and he was forced to set his shoulder to it and with the aid of the door, he was able to move it open enough for a man to enter through.

Within, the dark called and Zahi considered that if he were to somehow close it behind him, particularly with the key in his hand, then none would ever find his body, his tribe's talisman, and such a place for death might have been the work of Anat and her people.

He staggered as he slid into the opening and leaned heavily against the door's furthest edge. Immediately within, the scent of cool, wet, and human rank cut Zahi's sense of smell and into the pain, much like a dull knife tears at the flesh which is well cooked. A mallet would do better a job, if by no other means than brute force and the height of the preparing swing.

Zahi squinted into the shadows within. The stone had been hollowed out in angles, with thick lines rent into it. Along the upper surfaces, a dim, green light flooded the chamber as twisted vines on the ceiling described the ceiling of both the inner room and hallways beyond going either direction. Despite the monolith being a chimney of sorts, beyond the door felt in his bones, like a great deal larger than the very rock into which it was bored. It had a sound within, almost that of the soughing of the night winds, but greater, a storm perhaps.

The ground beneath him was hard and he looked down to see what it might have been and in the looking, his gaze swept over the shape beyond him. It stood, readied for him, its shape taken as that of a man, shirt white and hair wild. The djinn, for what could it have been else, was larger than he and with the pale skin and even paler eyes of the Franks with whom others had fought. He had heard that they stank, these foreigners, and this place which the door had led to reflected that belief.

“As-salamu alaykum,” the prince rumbled through the smell and his own weariness. He tipped his head, touched fingertips to head, to chin, to mouth, and then gave a small, pained bow. “I am the Prince Zahi Akeem Gabir Hakim Amjad. O Djinn, I ask but your favor to lie in this blessed place and set down my burdens. If I die here, you might do as you will with my bones so long as you leave my father's mark behind the closed door. I have here, the key which you and my Anat directed for me to use.” That said, he held out the key between them to prove his worth.

The Djinn though, as the shadows passed and its face came to be more distinct, looked not at all pleased to see him. Rather, he gave Zahir a glance of thunder and then fixated on the key. In fact, the Djinn was strangely human looking. The fierce free will of Anat's people, the sharp teeth, the golden fire of their spirit was lacking in this one. Zahir let his hand fall and gripped it, and the key, against his side. “If you were captured here, and I may presume, I would grant you your freedom for the right to bury myself out of any man's sight.” The creature had done nothing to make Zahir sure of himself and despite his initial belief that this was the Djinn's notions which had brought him here, he had begun to believe that perhaps it was more the will of the key, if such an intelligence could live in a key.

Behind, through the still open door, Anat snorted and the wind began to sift sand through the entry, pale against the hard floor underneath.

[Glaw]

Of course he didn't speak English. Just by the look of him (and of the sand that drifted in after him on hot breezes) it was clear that not a word of Dorian's own language would pass the stranger's dry lips -- but he saw a steady purpose in the man's eyes, and he heard an honest strength in that steady voice that could only belong to an honorable man. Dorian drew in a slow breath, and he lowered the blade shard as the stranger lowered the key. His heart and his instinct compelled him to not only trust this man, but to respect him.

"Bury you?" he blurted in English, as a fragmented meaning made itself clear in his head. Dorian absently shoved the shard in his belt and rubbed his face in his palms. "Hang on, hang on," he muttered, knowing he wasn't being understood, "it takes awhile sometimes. Language, language, come on come on come on..." He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, his head bowed to the stranger in a few moments of awkward silence, broken only by the quick tapping of his thin fingers on the wall behind him.

He'd learned long ago, after a dozen opened doors with Agatha at his side, that there was so much more to those vines on the walls besides simple light. Coursing throughout the ship on that organic network, like blood through the veins, were the knowledge, thoughts, beliefs and dreams of thousands, maybe millions of people. The raw energy of that hive mind -- the consciousness, Dorian had come to call it -- illuminated the halls with a glow like the sun and radiated throughout the ship, permeating its walls as well as its passengers. After the first week of roaming the labyrinth, Dorian had noticed that he knew things he couldn't possibly have known: he understood things he never in several lifetimes could have hoped to grasp. He could pick up an alien object and know a minute later exactly what it was. It had taken him a month to learn to shut out the dreams while he slept. He wasn't sure Agatha had slept at all. He understood why she'd left. The longer they remained on the ship, the stronger and faster the consciousness folded itself into his own mind. He often wondered whether he would someday lose himself entirely in it.

"Pak ourya immi -- no, wait." He frowned, feeling that was just the wrong dialect, then suddenly brightened. "Ah! As-salamu alaykum," he said in a heavy accent and with a polite nod. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Prince Zahi Akeem Gabir Hakim Amjad -- Your Highness -- but I really must assure you that I am not a Djinn. Just a man. I am called Dorian Foster. At your service, Your Highness." He spoke in Zahi's own language, though heavily influenced by his lazy English tongue, which improved slowly as he talked. He made another small bow.

"I can also assure you," he went on with a flourish, leaning foward with an encouraging smile, "that nobody is going to die today." He stood straight and proudly pointed down the hall. "Just down here, there's a --" He frowned, looking up as he thought, and he switched to English for a moment: "You don't have a word for hospital. Um. Healer!" He grinned, and repeated himself in Zahi's language. "Healer room. Down here. Fix you up very quickly, come with me, bring the key, come on -- uh, please. Your Highness."

Dorian began walking down the hall, making gentle beckoning motions to his newest friend. "You too, horsie! There's room for all, come on. Just --" he licked his lips, his brow furrowed, and pointed, "-- just leave that door open." There was no telling how fast the timeline was out there, and shutting the door could mean the difference of ten seconds or a thousand years. He cleared his throat. "So, Your Highness, if I may ask, how exactly did you come by that key?" He carefully composed his voice, and he kept his chin high as he spoke. He was frightened -- very frightened of the answer.

[ClosetMonster]

Zahi leaned against the wall and waited on the Djinn who spoke some strange language and held up a hand in another human gesture. Not one of Anat's people would request time, rather they took it for time was theirs to play about with. Thus, it was with some confusion that he watched this Djinn in the form of a Frank, as it stumbled about and put words into practice.

First, the words which – and then, glorious! It was pleased and despite all evidence to the contrary, the Djinn or the man, whichever it was, perhaps a magi of some sort, spoke to him as carefully, as well as if Zahi were indeed one of import, not a man who held his father's token to his chest and whom had not managed to foil a simple enough plot against him. A dagger in the hand of a shadow and it was all that was necessary. Zahi had laughed at himself after he had killed the would be assassin. He survived their encounter, but it would be a matter of days before the belly wound would take him as well.

As the man, the magi, the Djinn who was no Djinn, gestured to Zahi, the dark skinned prince looked about him as proudly as a hawk put to her first rest. His gaze, while clouded with pain, was still keen and he tipped his head just slightly to one side, watching this stranger back from him. Behind him, at the door, Anat had obviously taken the inclusion seriously and she, golden as the sun, stepped into the strange green light. The gold of sands did not hold up against the dark and the green and she dipped her head, her delicate hooves tokking on the floor, and her entire body lit to a tarnished copper. With a shiver across her fine flesh, she set herself at her rider's side and took his weight. He, without thinking, gave it to her, leaning into her and sighing as weariness flooded him.

They left the door open behind him, both because he hadn't power to close it, but also because none of his people were about to enter into a Djinn's realm without permission, and together with Anat's tender urging and the stranger's insistence, Anat and the prince delved further into the darkened emerald hall. To not die, it would have been better for him, yet to take such a gift from anyone in this place, Zahi feared what might be the outcome. Was it he too would be caught here, to be let free once again but only by one with the door? It was all too obvious that his newest host felt some trepidation about the door itself, yet by the same token, did not rush for freedom. Instead, he tempted Zahi further.

“This key,” Zahi looked down at the dark key which he found he still clutched in his hand. “It was in the sands outside the door,” he muttered and glanced at the man. “Forgive me, O my host, but I found it within the bones of what had to have been a child or a woman, it clung to the bones and did not sift into the sands to be lost forever. I had thought it yours.” And again, he held it out, his hand trembling as he did so.

[Glaw]

Dorian paused with his hand on the splintering corner of a new hallway. He felt the breath leave his lungs. He swallowed. His fingers curled into a loose fist against the living wood, tightened once, released.

Agatha had begged him to leave. She had pleaded for a stable life, for a home, to look up at the same sky every morning, to see the same stars. He had thought her naive to want anything else when the universe was opened to her, when the opportunity of a lifetime was staring her in the face. He'd said as much, just before she'd gone. She hadn't even left a note.

He took a quick, deep breath, raised his head and and faced Zahi. Dorian respected this man too much to fake a smile. The desert prince's problems were a thousand times his own right now.

Dorian reached out and gently took the key from Zahi's shaking fingers. Concern for his new friend's condition sent a shudder down his spine, and he pressed the key to his heart. "Thank you," he said, breathless, in Zahi's own language, with a deep gratitude in his eyes.

With a quiet step back, he drew and released another breath, his expression turning thoughtful and determined. He flipped the key in his long hand, dropped it safely into his breast pocket, and spun to face another door beside them: cherry wood and plain, with an old iron handle. His fingers curled around it, but he stilled a moment in second thoughts. He couldn't simply thrust Zahi into what lay beyond that door -- he'd die of culture shock before any healer could attend to him. Dorian licked his lips, lifted his head, straightened his shirt.

"Now, Your Highness..." He faced Zahi, watching him in careful warning, and he looked meaningfully between the prince and the horse and made soothing gestures while he explained. "Behind this door is ..." He pointed to the door in question, and his finger made a few circles in the air while he tried to think of some simple yet plausible explanation. His face contorted a little with the effort. "Well. When I open this door, you will see ... phenomenal things. Magic things. Things you never imagined could exist. I would like to encourage you -- both of you," he glanced to the horse, which had been called Anat if he wasn't mistaken, "to remain calm." He showed them his palms and lowered them for emphasis of the stillness of the mind like water. Or something. "There is nothing to be afraid of. These wonderful things and these wonderful people will help you. They are healers." Dorian couldn't help another glance at Zahi's wound again, and he swallowed. He could only imagine the festering and the pain. "I will ask you later, when you're well, what has happened to you." He was curious. Deathly curious. Curious enough to wish ill upon whatever had done this to such an honorable man. But one thing at a time.

He cleared his throat. "Okay. Well. If you're ready, Your Highness." With an air of stiff dignity (and slight fear that Zahi might cause a scene or run off or die on the spot) Dorian clicked the handle and gently pushed the door open.

Bright light penetrated first into the dim hall. When Dorian's eyes adjusted, he saw the familiar white floors and sterile curtains of a 26th century children's ward in a skyscraper hospital somewhere near Osaka; it beeped and buzzed and sighed in all manner of electronic life, bright with new flowers and crayon drawings, stuffed bears and cartoon posters.

A few of the dark-headed children sat up the moment an invisible door opened in the farthest wall, and they blinked and craned their necks, though some had tubes attached to their noses or were tethered to machines by wires. Dorian stepped out silently, tiptoeing, a finger to his lips to keep them quiet for his sneaking game.

One of the children, who had the best view of the other side of the door, grinned suddenly. "Horse!" she squealed in Japanese.

"Yes, yes, a horse," Dorian responded automatically in their own language, waving his hands, trying urgently to placate the excited children. "Listen carefully and stay very quiet: the horse's owner is very hurt and he needs a doctor --"

Immediately, four of the children, eager to help, jammed on their nurse-call buttons, causing an outright ruckus in the hallway. Dorian rubbed his face in his hand, and he looked back and gestured encouragingly to Zahi, giving him an apologetic smile.

[ClosetMonster]

Zahi's hand rose against the bright light then fell before it could shadow his gaze. Gold flecks picked out in his gaze and he dropped his lids, clung to Anat's side who, strength of the desert sands, did not move, though she threw her head and snorted in alarm at the wash of scents coming through the door. Still, she was her master's strength. He, who had taken her into his home, who had slept at her side, she was an uncommon creature and her delicate, tulip ears held straight ahead.

When it seemed to her that Zahi was going to enter into the world of children's cries and smells of lyme covered death, the mare stepped as lightly toward the bright opening as if the floor under her hooves were made of glass.

Perhaps it was the collective call buttons. A rushing sound of soft soled shoes and two nurses walked quickly through the door, stopped in shock not as much at the open door as at the filthy man in the middle of a germ-free zone. The older woman gave a soft gasp while the younger woman clicked her tongue and moved into the room, only to stop once more, for it was at that time Zahi entered with Anat at his side.

He moved graceful and composed, as if he were not injured in the least. His arm tucked about his waist might have been Napolean's hand in state paintings. The prince's head was up and in the pale light of the hospital, he was a wild jackal let into a nursery. Beside him, his opposite hand holding her mane tightly enough his knuckles were pale, Anat flared gold, her color brought to life away from the growth green of the halls behind her. They might have carried the scent of dry winds and spices, if not in reality than to the imagination. Anat tucked her chin and looked about her with white rimmed eyes while her master gave a slight bow from the waist, almost hiding how the very action caused him pain. He touched his fingertips to his brow and gave his greeting to the assembled children and the women. Then his dark gaze turned on Dorian.

“You have brought me to a women's space,” Zahi said by way of asking, but did not look at the nurses. “This place is a great one, filled with many children.” He did not dare ask about which of the women was Dorian's ra'it al bayt, the mistress of his home, nor was he fully certain that Dorian's wife was one of these, nor that these his children. Dorian had said it was a healer's home. But was it that the women here were the healers, even of a man? He flushed under his sun-darkened skin and kept his eyes on Dorian over all others. Dorian's features were not like those around him, he'd seen the sloe-colored eyes and black hair on traders many years back, gifting Zahi's people with a bolt of cloth and spices they did not use but which his mother had chosen to have because it would have been unwelcoming to not purchase something from their visiting traders. But those people had gone again, worn and exhausted, and going to the cities on the other side of the desert. There was talk that they had not made it all the way, but that the sands had swallowed them.

The children were chattering and Zahi's head ached, but he did not understand anything they said. They spoke quickly, fluid, like water over rocks, and Zahi kept himself upright and without complaint as the children moved restlessly on the bed and whispered, giggled together. All about them, the white was overwhelming and in amongst the white, splotches of color, images painted onto the walls.

Anat, in response to those nearing her, laid her ears back flat against her skull. She snaked her head forward and snapped at the air near one of the women who approached, but did not bite. No – she was too well behaved for such things, though she would not allow anyone near her prince as he swayed and was unwell. Zaynab alone, she would have soothed Anat, made it so that healers could reach him, but without his sister's touch, the mare was tense as stone and her protection would keep away any who might hurt him.

Zahi took a step in close to his mare and lifting the hand at his waist, he pressed it to her neck. It marred her hide with his blood, but she would not give any opportunity to aid in her attempt to keep him safe. “Ssaa, ssaa Mistress of mine. Ssaa,” he murmured to her. “We must give our hosts our best of intentions and not bring strife into their home. Ssaa, my desert flower. Ssaa, O wind daughter. Bring no trouble.”

Still, he did not look on the women, but as Anat snorted and tilted her muzzle to trail hot breath along his arm, the desert man gave his attention once more to Dorian. “If I die, will you take her back to her home? The Djinn would like their child back.”

He slid, then fell as gracelessly as any other who had lost consciousness, other than he had shown no signs of it. With a sigh, he fell to the floor in a heap, a puppet whose strings had been cut. Anat lifted her tail high and stepped near him, her nose against his neck and whickered in concern. She tossed her head then stepped back from the man dying on the floor. With thin skin shivering as if by invisible flies, the mare stamped her forehoof and licked her lips. Her unease was plain, now that her master did not lean on her, but she made no more against those around her.

[Glaw]

"Whoa, hey!" Dorian threw himself forward and slid on his knees over the shining white floor, but he was too late to prevent Zahi from hitting the floor. His eyes wide in alarm, he crawled over the regal desert prince and pressed a hand to the side of his throat, his own heart slamming in his chest. "Zahi," he breathed. He had known the wound was bad, but Zahi had been walking, coherent and thoughtful -- nothing that would have indicated he was so near death. Damn these heroic men!

The nurses flurried around him, and Dorian scooted and stumbled away to let them do their work. While the nurses touched their patient precisely and recited life signs to one another, Dorian carefully approached the horse, a hand held out in peace.

"Good girl," he said in a low, kind voice, keeping his gaze on the horse's long-lashed brown eyes. "Anat, isn't it? There you are, Anat, it's all right. Good old Zahi will be just fine, you'll see." He laid a gentle hand on Anat's face, while a stretcher was brought in and Zahi was cradled onto it. Within moments the prince was being wheeled away by running sneakers and a blur of blue scrubs. "Ssaa, ssaa," Dorian sighed, stroking Anat's muzzle, his back to the hallway, imitating what he'd seen Zahi do. "He called you a child of the djinn, Anat." He ran his hand along her nose, and he watched her eyes for signs of intelligence. "I wonder if that's true. I could tell you a world of stranger things I've seen."

Motion caught the corner of his eye, and he whistled and clucked at a little boy who had crawled out of bed and was creeping toward the open door in the wall. "Hey, hey, back to bed," he commanded in Japanese. "Ah, you!" He pointed to a slightly older and much more intelligent-looking girl in the next bed. He read the front of a card on her side table. "Sakura. Please take charge of the door. Let no one get close to it. No one," he peered around the room, pointing an accusing finger at each of them, "is to go anywhere near that door. If anyone goes near that door, I won't tell you the ultra-secret password. Now. What should you never do?" The children resounded -- "Never go near the door!" -- and Dorian smiled and nodded, and he clucked at Anat and led her, if she would allow it, into the hallway.

The chaos had gone down the corridor with Zahi, so now there was only the ambient beeping and low murmurs of a quietly efficient hospital. "Dorian!" a head nurse called, wide-eyed and amused. "A horse this time? What've you done now?"

"Could you tell surgery I'll be in the shower room?" he asked sheepishly. He had not failed to notice the trail of sand and flakes of blood that Anat was leaving in her wake. He stroked the horse's muzzle again and whispered to Anat. "How would you feel about getting a bit cleaned up, yeah? Zahi will be scrubbed shiny by now, himself, and your ears are full of sand." He made a sour face as he noticed this latter fact, and he guided her farther, into a wide and expansive tiled room with drains in the floor and all manner of running water.

He washed the dry blood from her flank with a damp cloth and a scrub brush, as thoroughly as she would allow, and he combed her mane and scrubbed her hooves and beat out her saddle blanket, sometimes waving with a friendly smile at the towel-waisted men that gave him passing odd looks.

By the time he was finished, a nurse popped his head in to announce Zahi was out of surgery. With an encouraging smile, Dorian led Anat out of the shower room and back down the hall to see her master.

[ClosetMonster]

The horse shook herself and watched the other human who had led her around the strange world with dark eyed patience. Her nostrils remained flared throughout the entire ordeal and she danced out of his hands a time or two, but he was quiet with her and she rewarded his behavior with a lady-like demeanor as if she were a queen before a coronation. An intelligence ranged about her, naturally gifted because to have any creature at one's side in the desert, there must be some breeding for independent thought. Without her master, she remained in control.

She was not so giving to others, however, and whenever a stranger showed a sign of approaching, her slender ears would flick back against her skull and she would not hesitate to menace them, a cocked hoof or a snap of her jaws. She was a creature of beauty and beautiful threat, the one juxtaposed over the other.

When she was cleaned, her hide gleamed dark with the water and she had set her nose to the tiles where she had drank of the runoff, licking it to get at the wealth. But the water was over and he led her from the sheer tiles onto the white hallways where the ground remained as slippery as before. She walked daintily, unsure of her footing, and snorted in alarm when a beeping sound erupted out of an open doorway. Still, she followed him and kept close eye on this one.

The hospital staff watched as he led her through their clean domain and despite the bath, she would never be clean enough for them. She breathed heavily, taking in the random scents and while she had not voided once, the place smelled too much of man to do anything that gauche, she was leaving hairs about.

They were directed toward a particular recovery room where a gentleman stood over the insensate Zahi. The desert prince looked anything but what he was. His hair back, his skin cleaned, his slender body in a blue hospital gown and then covered in the white blankets, he was just a darker skinned man with tubes in his bare arms and into his nose.

Anat whickered, recognizing his scent even in the midst of all of the antiseptics and soaps. She stepped forward, but when he did nothing in response, she merely stood, waiting for him, her dark eyes fixed on him.

“The wound hadn't ruptured any of his vital organs,” the man said, watching the horse with a slight frown on his face. “Doctor did have to clean out a good deal of blood and injured tissue. It was an extensive wound and had he waited any longer, he wouldn't have made it. You would do well to bring any subsequent ones to us before their injuries could fester. Doctor supposed it had been four days since he'd been injured. He obviously had kept a constant motion which, while it normally would not be very good, it had kept the bleeding up which in turn kept the wound washed, in a manner of speaking.” He sniffed. Obviously he didn't think very highly of using active bleeding as a sanitary practice. “But he's lost a lot of blood as well. It's a wonder he was standing.”

The mare seemed small, despite the large room, and she approached when the man moved away from the bed, so that she might touch her muzzle to his arm where the needles had entered.

“Don't let that animal touch him like that. She'll only contaminate the site.” The man's lips thinned.

[Glaw]

"Aw, she's no animal!" Dorian grinned and petted Anat's muzzle, though gently leading her away from the wound as he did so. "Are you, lovely?" he cooed, laughed, and raised his eyes to the man he only assumed to be the nurse. "This beautiful lady is the reason your miraculous patient has remained standing and moving and living far longer than he really ought to." He kept a hand on Anat's face, and he looked down at the sleeping patient. "That, and the weight of a thousand souls rests on this man's shoulders. A little flesh wound wasn't about to slow him down." Zahi looked so ... average ... laying there like anyone else, in a hospital sack like anyone else, scrubbed down and sewn up and tucked in like anyone else. He could just as easily be a vacuum salesman as the heroic prince of of a noble desert people. It wasn't right at all.

Dorian snapped out of his reverie and took a breath, blinking. So the nurse was still here, like a hangnail. "Yes, well!" He cleared his throat and clapped his hands. "How about his things? His clothes and the ... stuff he was carrying when he ... ah ... nearly died?" While he was in the mood for cleaning up, he might as well wash and polish whatever needed washing and polishing -- though he expected at least half of the prince's clothes to have been destroyed in the surgeons' haste to clear and staunch the wound in his stomach. Zahi won't be happy about that. He'll be less happy when he sees the fine selection of bleach-smelling tee shirts and sweat pants the hospital would offer him. Dorian wasn't quite sure whether this was sad or hilarious; he folded his arms with a bemused smile.

"And when, would you say, might I be able to take him home?" Home was only a simple word for something that would take too much explaining, to someone he wasn't at all keen on explaining anything to. "As soon as he wakes up, he's going to want to get on with his life. Immediately." This, of course, was fair warning.

[ClosetMonster]

The nurse lifted a brow and the air of Mother's Watchful Eye did not abate. He had not stepped in to stop the horse from being near, but neither did he approve and every stiff line in his body said so.

“Provided he does not have an adverse reaction to the anesthesia, he will waken in anywhere before an hour at which time you are welcome to take him home.” He opened his mouth as if to say something regarding paperwork or something equally officious, when another voice broke through the room.

“You brought us another and we are an animal hospital now I've heard.”

She was older, with enough crow's feet around her eyes to make her seem perpetually smiling, her wide, generous mouth turned up at the corners. Her hand went to Zahi's shoulder and the nurse did as most nurses do, and dissipated.

“A shower? For an animal. In a hospital?” Her laugh was small and contained, as if she did not dare let it out over something she no doubt be very upset about. “But, may I say, a very beautiful one, your new friend? A berber, she looks like, though not quite. Perhaps she's more of Turkish -” she paused and then looked down at the washed out face of the dark skinned man on the bed. Her hand reached to touch his cheek and she gave a sigh.”He is not Turk, one need only see his eyes to know. So she's not Turkish, but from Arabia. Nevertheless, she is beautiful.”

Leaving the man in the bed, the doctor nodded toward a chair nearest and beckoned to it. “You must tell me, because the children are telling tales and I have to make report, but want to know what to put in, what not to.” Her delicate brows raised and she leaned in to look at him. “Then I and your friend will look over him while you get a bath in. You smell, young man.”

[Glaw]

"Hey, hey, this is work sweat!" he scoffed with a grin, and he dropped into a chair opposite the doctor and took up as much comfort as possible. "Do ya like the duds, though? Don't I look dashing? Ignoring the smell." He lifted his chin and straightened the collar of his sweat-stained shirt. "World War Two, Air Force, Battle of Britain. You should've seen it, the swarms of planes, the noise and flash like lightning, the incredible rush of --" he stopped, tipped his head sheepishly, cleared his throat, sat up straighter. "Yes, well, right, so the Turk. Or the Arabian. Or -- what did you say he was? He speaks in a ... ah ..." Dorian looked up into his mind for a moment, then switched into Zahir's language. "He speaks like a noble prince of the sands." It took him another moment to switch to Japanese again. "I'm not sure what language that is, just -- well, you're sure he's not ... magical or anything, right? True blue human? One hundred percent average Prince of Arabia?" His smile wavered, and he looked across at the unconscious patient and the faithful horse that guarded over him. He opened his mouth and took a slow breath.

"He came to me," he said with a lingering sense of awe. No one had ever done that before -- he had never known anyone to open a door into the Peregrine without being let in. "He stepped forward and introduced himself as ... ah ... Prince Zahi Akeem Gabir Hakim Amjad. Don't ask me to spell it. His faithful companion there is Anat. He never mentioned what was wrong, and he walked all right with her help -- he said he was about to die, though, so of course I brought him straight to you. Nobody dies on my watch." Agatha. His expression wavered for a moment before the smile returned. "I haven't even seen his home -- I don't even know where or when his home is, really -- I've known him all of a total fifteen minutes. I do know he'll make a full recovery. He strikes me as the sort of man who bounces back.

"But -- as far as your report goes, maybe just set him down as a crazy homeless guy, right? Car accident or -- so, what exactly do you think sliced him up again?" He was sure it had to be a sword. Zahi was a man on a mission, and Arabian Princes didn't go around being all noble about any old accidental wound. There'd been a battle -- and wherever there was a battle, there was adventure to be had.

[ClosetMonster]

The doctor laughed at his looking well. Yes, he did look quite dapper – in a dusty, damaged, World War Two sort of way, as he shared. But the thought of the rush was not her language. No – give her healing and saving others, not battling them and causing them suffering. Granted such thoughts did not go through the heads of young ones like Dorian, any more than the thought of cutting into flesh and bone came to her mind when she worked on her craft.

As he prattled on, she set her hands together, interweaving her fingers as she cupped her heart close. He was dear, this one. She so rarely connected to any one of them, but neither did they continue to wonder as openly as Dorian. He still felt. He still dreamed. It was a rare self which he offered to her and she treasured the child-like stream of words.

As he took a breath, she laughed and laid her hand upon his knee. “Peace,” she said softly. As he settled under her soft palm, she leaned back once more and gave him a look.

“His wound first. It is a blade which harmed him. He was stabbed, with an intent it seems, to disembowel him. But whomever attempted did not succeed. I would hazard a guess he was able to either break away or he killed the one who was trying to kill him. You will of course ask him when he is woken.

“But that is least important,” she smiled softly. “Because yes, my dearest, he is human. I've nothing to tell me if he has some manner of mutation which one might call magic. I cannot tell if he has telepathic abilities or if his brain is capable of making potives and chemical explosions ages before his time. There is no science which will explain how a simple man was able to walk into our hospital, nor how he opened the door. You look for the metaphysical and of that, I have no knowledge outside of my own girlhood dreams of the same.”

The doctor's eyes crinkled lightly at the corners as her eyes smiled in memory. “I think, if I were in your shoes, it would be hard not to love such a man of magic and spices. Beware, young man,” she teased, then stood and clapped her hands together briskly. “Now, let us assume he is Arab, of one of the tribes, no doubt, from the sands of the great desert. A prince or a raja or maharaja, it would seem. Perhaps a shah, even. There is little history of those peoples, they did not keep written tales of their own lines and did not speak of their pasts. Rather, they lived very in the present. But he shows no sign of British occupation. No gun on him, no smell of powder. Therefore, he is from the time before. How far back, there would be only one way of knowing and it would be to return and go find the rest of the world.” She turned to touch the hospital pale dark skin of the boy in the bed and sighed softly. Yearning for something which was nameless – to live in a time which was, perhaps, that much more simple than her own.

“I will watch his friend and you must go clean up, rest, and we will call you when he wakens, Dorian.” The mare shook herself and lowered her head to lip at Dorian's shoulder, blowing warm into his ear. “Or,” the doctor's brow rose and she held back the laugh she wished to release, “you could take your friend with you and the two of you could rest in one of the attending physician apartments. You'd be sure to clean up after her, I'm sure.”

Far from the hospital, in both time and space, a jackal shook herself and sniffed at the edge of a doorway. Her mother, her mother's mother, her maternal lines blurred, kept watch and her watch had been upset. A scent led to their charge, the scent of man and beast. But it did not leave nor did it linger. Instead, the charge was empty but for the light, gentle touch of vestiges in the form of tattered pages under the sands. And beyond the charge lay a dark hole through which scents so robust and shifting from one to another made her sneeze in response. She pawed her nose, shook her maned ruff, then snuffled about in the bones of their charge.

At times, a story must be told – told again and again, until the spirits which kept it were discharged. Such spirits were lost in the rest of the world, kept hale and hearty by a land which was impossible to breach but by creative means well beyond many men's abilities. Only the most spiritual could live in a world where life lay hidden under silver sand and bone clearing wind. Only the greatest of souls could roam untouched through a palace of raging loss.

The jackal bitch began to dig.

[Glaw]

"Aye-aye, Captain." Dorian's eyes crinkled, and he rubbed Anat's muzzle warmly. "I think she's getting to like me, aren't you, sweetheart?" he added in Arabic. "We're going to be the best of friends, yeah? Of course I'll clean up after you." Because what were friends for if not scraping apples off the hospital room floor?

He flung himself to his feet and stretched, and he gave the doctor a kind smile. "Thank you, Doctor. I know Zahi is in the most capable hands this side of the galaxy." Dorian liked her quite a lot -- there were few people he felt compelled to talk to so freely, who didn't think he was insane -- and a few times he'd considered asking if she'd like to tour the Peregrine, to peek into a few other worlds, to see all those tantalizing and colorful places of his stories -- but, maybe selfishly, he liked to know she was here, safe, a reliable constant in a life of chaos. He knew she wouldn't abandon her patients and her practice for the promise of the universe -- but he continued to withhold that decision from her, for both their sakes.

He swung to his feet and gently drew Anat away from Zahi's bedside. "If you happen to be here when he wakes up," he told the doctor, "tell him:" and he spoke in slow Arabic, "Anat is safe and you are alive. Please trust us to help you. And then come get me because I really don't know how he'll react."

He waved with a laugh, and he walked with Anat down the hall, to where he knew the spare apartments were. It was a bit of a walk down wide white corridors, quiet out of respect for the sleeping and the pained. When he reached the reception desk he begged for a bucket of carrots and apples and crunchy things from the cafeterias to be brought to the room at the end of the hall, and he led his new friend to the door in question and into a big spartan room.

While Dorian was in the shower, the door opened again and a cafeteria worker peeked in with big curious eyes. She caught sight of Anat, blinked, smiled, and laid a pail of greens and vegetables on the floor before she crept out again into the hall. Dorian, meanwhile, sang an aria to the bathroom walls.

He emerged in a hospital-issue gray sweatsuit, rubbing a towel through his hair, and he patted Anat's neck and flopped back onto the bed with a news tablet he'd found on a table.

"You don't suppose he'll be terribly disappointed, do ya think?" he asked of Anat, and he made an uncertain face at her. "I mean, he came all this way to find a place to die -- and instead he finds a hospital. I'm not sure he believed me when I told him there was a healer. He's not going to be mad, is he?" He could only imagine the dying heroic prince, having completed the task set to him, ready to die a hero's death in peace -- only to be saved and forced to consider what to do with the rest of his long life. Dorian shook his head and scanned the tablet for pictures, but really he was thinking of Agatha.

[ClosetMonster]

Yay!

So that took forever and I do not apologize for the oddity of the post. I have a young man working on high solvent projects in my kitchen and the fumes are no doubt getting to me. ;) But here it is!

The darkness parted much in the way it might after a night of heavy celebration. Not one to overindulge, still Zahi had, a time or two, managed to be young and foolish. So the sense of having eyelids unfit for opening and a stomach that rebelled even a horizontal position wasn't foreign.

The pang in his side and the shocky numb sensation everywhere else were odd. As was the sensation of surrealism. Waking always was always to the sounds of his camp or the sounds of the hidden oasis of his people; Anat's snuffling nearby, the chatter of children over the softer murmur of mothers, both underlying the more brusque laughter of a brother, an uncle, a friend – men working. A breeze against tenting, the soft hiss of shifting sands, or a crackle of fire with the spiced scent which filled the nostrils, this was waking and had been waking from his first breath.

This – no this waking had a bitterness as if the air itself had gone bad. Rotten flowers and dying camels long left to the winds had something similar and Zahi's brow furrowed at the unpleasant scent. Somewhere, echoing footsteps like men walking through a cave and the murmur of old women broke free of a strange bird song – consistent and chirping without melody. The very air about him felt too light, stripped of life and sunshine.

Opening his eyes, Zahi blinked in bleary surprise at the white world all around him. Metal shone and angles broke the world like a shattered spear. Memory tried to tie him to the moment he and Anat had left the genie's world, but it failed to function completely and Zahi moved a hand in an attempt to pull back the dream. He met air and with a groan, stared at his arm – cold and with a worm like creature wrapped against his forearm and buried into his hand.

“Saaa...” a woman's voice interrupted him, her soft, warm hand taking his other when he reached for the thing which sucked, leechlike, from his skin. She came into view and he stared at her, attempting to make her fit into the rest of the world about.

“I have given myself to the djinn,” he frowned. “Is this to be my fate?”

She touched his arm and guided it with a gentle pressure back to his stomach, atop a poorly woven blanket, thin and delicate under his palm. Such weave could not last in the sands but perhaps, in a world where there was nothing like sand or wind or men with their work, blankets like this were as silk was to the maharaja. The weave was unlike silk in that even silk had substance.

Assured he'd not try to pull at his other arm, the woman stood and leaned over him. She moved like a woman at the loom – checking thread and drawing color. However, there was no weaving over him. Instead, lights whirled and the bird chirps, so unlike any bird, jarred his ears. He winced at the pain which rocketed through his head. Unsure what he was to do, he watched her. She was a small woman, much like his mother and aunt. Her skin hadn't the same wear, but she was old nevertheless and capable. Her every action had purpose even if he was unable to divine it. When she completed her motions, she gazed down at him and there was warmth in her gaze. Perhaps, if there was one to look at him in that way, then this was not a fate, but more magic?

“Anat safe and … alive, she began – her words stumbling and confused. At the broken language, he realized she was trying with thick accent, to tell him something. Confusion plain on his face, he reached for her arm, tapped the back of it after she'd murdered every word she was trying to say, he almost could have made sense out of it and he rolled a finger in a circle in the air until she nodded and tried again.

The second time was slower and she had seemed to have forgotten some of what she was to say. What was obvious throughout, was her attempt to tell him he was safe and that there was trusting to be had. She had mentioned Anat and while he did not see his companion, he felt her kindness meant that the mare was sure to be well.

The djinn, or the man who was not djinn, she did not mention and with a pat to his hand, she left him to the silence of death all about. He struggled to sit up, his stomach screaming in pain, and with a grunt, stared down at himself. It was no wonder he was so cold, for nothing on his skin was of any substance. With a grimace he ignored the babble of words which the woman seemed to be speaking outside the cold door and instead, tugged at the flimsy garment he was dressed in to get a better look at the wound in his stomach. Whatever it was in his arm, the worm was long and she had asked him to leave it, though the concept bothered him and yet it would not have done to argue any desire of those who lived in the djinn's realm. Who was he to question she or any other?

The garment was almost torn to one side when she reentered and with a cluck of the tongue she rushed to the edge of the bedding they'd laid him on. He waved her away with a short, “Woman, I will not lay down like a child!” but she batted his hand to the side and the pair made a gentle war over his clothing and his resting once more. After some moments of her chatter and his grunts of annoyance, she gave in to his sitting up, but began to make much of the bedding itself and with some alien rumblings of the bedding itself, made the back raise to support him.

He grimaced at her in distaste. He was no ancient to have pillows plumped, but nevertheless, he could accept it was easier to manage the pain in his torso if he bent somewhat to her will. If nothing else, she gave him peace from her fussing and instead, merely frowned at him.

At the first sign, the doctor had sent an intern to the physician's apartments. The girl ducked her head inside and held her breath. There, in the midst of the room, stood a horse, tail swishing and head turned to look over her back at the door. Upon the bed, not far from the mare and a bucket of half eaten vegetables, lay the traveler who seemed almost asleep, if not fully there.

“Sir,” the girl whispered, unfamiliar enough with animals larger than a medium sized dog that the presence of the horse left her uncertain, “Doctor asked I get you. Your friend is awake.”

The mare shook herself and returned to gazing down at the man on the bed, having been rather taken with him. Anat was a quick animal and he was the kind hand on her in the midst of confusion. Trained and bred for battle, for utter trust, she had no experience with men of kindness leading her astray so that her trust in the midst of fearful surroundings was complete.

[Glaw]

Dorian was somewhere between sleeping and waking when a distinctly familiar voice roused him. He took in a slow, deep breath of bleach-clean sheet-smell and smiled. "You won't believe the dream I've had." His voice was lazy as his half-drooped eyes, and he stretched like a cat on his back.

"The Snowfall Nebula was gleaming like a sea of diamonds -- and there was one little planet, tiny in a field of titan rocks -- and it was singing. I know what you're going to say, there's no sound in space, but I swear to you this planet had a voice, and that voice was happy and sad and hopeful and desperate all at once, the most gorgeous thing I've ever heard. I bet you I didn't imagine it, I bet it's a memory from the Peregrine, and I bet you there's a door that'll take us to --"

When he sat up, his grin faltered. It wasn't Agatha standing there, after all. The day's events seeped back into his consciousness and crowded out the constant murmur of a thousand ancient voices; he leaped out of bed with a fling of blankets, grabbed his stinky crumpled British Air Force shirt and rummaged in its folds until the brass key clattered brightly to the floor.

A breath he'd been holding eased out of his lungs. He bent over and folded the key into his fingers, and he looked up with a warm smile to the nurse. "Arigato," he said smoothly, "we'll be there soon to wish him a happy recovery." He watched her until she had gone down the hall, and he leaped to his feet.

"Hear that, pretty girl?" he cooed to Anat, stuffing his boots and uniform into a pillow case. "The sand-prince has awakened, and in recovery no less. Probably waging war on the ghosts in the machines by now." He slung the pillow case over his shoulder and patted her nose with the hand that held the key. "Let's go rescue the nurses from his royal highness, shall we?"

Soon he was padding barefoot and bed-headed down the bright hospital corridor, dressed in baggy gray sweats and a white tee, with a stuffed pillow case in one hand and a key in the other, a regal mare clopping behind him.

It was a little too quiet. But of course, the doctor had worked her magic as she always did, because the prince was calm(ish) and sitting up and trusting that the wires and machines and rough blankets and white walls were all for the best. Dorian peeked in through the doorway and gave him a wide grin.

"Prince Zahi, you look well!" he crowed, and he dawdled into the room, beckoning Anat after him. "You'll make a complete recovery I'm told. Never expected anything less. But hang on, I brought you a present." He produced a small plastic pitcher, and from it poured a cupful of cool clear water. Dorian handed it to Zahi with a wink. "I expect you don't see this much where you're from. There's as much as you could possibly want, here. How do you feel?"

[ClosetMonster]

The silence of the white halls did little to hide the sound of horse hooves on cold tile. It was like the palace in night time and unlike, in that the echoes did not ring but fell flat and stale in the burdened air. Zahi's dark eyes were fixed on the door long before the man who is not djinn entered, closely followed behind by an obedient Anat.

The pain in his belly had settled as he sat quiet and he felt quite able to stand once more. Zahi gave a fierce look to the man who is not djinn, unwilling to meet the man smile for smile when there was truly nothing in this place which instilled happiness. He then plucked the water from the man's hands with a prim uncertainty, tasting the water and finding it flat and cold with a biting taste, almost acidic, underlying it. It was water, however. This much was true. “There is nothing like, in my home,” he admitted with care. It would not do to offend his host.

Seeing no sign of the old woman and believing that now in the company of another man, he might take a chance and not be the invalid the woman wished him to be, Zahi drew back the blankets and swung his legs over the side of the cold bed. Anat, silent but for her tail swishing in contentment, flicked her ears to the hall, then returned them to her master. As he gripped the edge of the bed, Zahi took a slow breath.

“Do not think me common, O my host. I am grateful for this chance to see your land. It is superb, white and filled with a great many wonders which my simple life will not explain.” His stomach heaved slightly and he settled it with a determined swallow and tilted his head toward the man who is not djinn. “But such a life is not for me. I do not know what ties this land of yours has to our sands, no doubt you are as happy as I to be in the winds again.” He glanced at the doorway where a woman in white with her hair pulled severely back as many of the women were then cleared his throat. “If you must keep me, at the very least, let me leave the women's compartments and cease their hovering. I am feeling like a broken old man with all of their nattering at me.” His jaw clenched as did his fingers at the edge of the bed.

Anat shook herself then snuffled at the back of Dorian's head, lipping at the hair there before she snorted as if to second what her master had said. The air in the hospital was not a dry, heated comfort but smelt of sickness and death and the animal was forced to take her comfort in the nearness of kind men.

At the edge of worlds, the jackal bitch mouthed the dry papers, kept whole by dry and sands and spirits. Careful of the pages, she sneezed the dead out of her nose and trotted without second thought into the dark recesses beyond the propped door. Her small paws left small sand imprints for a stride or two, at which time the prints then faded to nothing. Keen eyes saw more in the dark than the human before her had and she left the small room for the green hallways beyond, undeterred by the thrumming and lack of detectable movement nearby. The enclosed spaces were den-like and she merely kept an eye out for whatever large thing it was which left such a large hole.

Some ways in, she found an alcove and there, paused. The parchment laid at her feet, she yawned widely, her teeth tinged emerald in the gloom, and flicking her tail over her paws, she perched, as if a cat, atop a wide shelf and kept watch. Her whiskers told her someone would be along soon and she had a delivery to make.