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❝Once upon a time in Baghdad, a street girl teaches the Khalifa of the kingdom why a king needs a queen.❞
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Started: June 5, 2021.
Completed: March 30, 2022.
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cover by @xniftykayx
featured on wattpad historical fiction, undiscovered...
When my wounds caused by your remembrance begin to heal, I find an excuse to think of you once again.
— Faiz Ahmed Faiz
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Him
Her memories are like cursed ghost not leaving his bones but homing there. And he in all his folly has never bothered saving himself of them. Her memories have become the chains at his feet that keep him bounded to her. Wherever he goes, now when he has found her, he keeps returning to her.
"What is your name, boy?"
He smiles as he recalls the day he had first met her at the palace. He was a meek child, and she was a tempest.
"Why won't you tell me? Do you have no name?"
He remembers how she had poked his shoulder to get him talking and his failed attempts at shooing her away.
"My name is Noura."
"Noura?" he whispers to the vast canvas of galaxy.
"I'll sing you a poem my baba has taught me." He hears her voice ringing in his ears.
"Butterflies and roses," he sings to himself.
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Her
"So it's a mare?"
"Yes."
"Does she have a name?"
"It's Hayat."
"Hayat?"
The sky is in soft shades of pink and orange and another long day is finally coming to an end. A few fragments of clouds sail above her; they're frail and she knows the night will reward her with silver of the stars again-- like the grains of sand below her feet will be the grains of glitters in the sky when darkness falls. She has awaited it every dwindling hour of every day.
Noura sits on a rock and Adam stands a few feet away from her, feeding his mare. It has been close to a week they've been traveling together and in a day or two they'll be finally arriving at the palace in Baghdad, as he had informed her. The man doesn't speak much, mostly keeping to himself, but she has still somehow managed to get a few things out of him, though not of much significance. Yet where she has to cover the journey alone with him and be wary of him, it was becoming impossible to ignore her captor for long.
"What's the name of my horse?" she asks, referring to the big gray animal she has been riding upon during the span of days.
He hunches a shoulder in ignorance. "I don't know. It's from the stables, not my personal."
"Then can I name him?"
He glances at her, and for the nth time her gaze lingers on the scars of his eyebrow. "I don't see why not."
