Virago | 2018 Wattys Shortlist

six: part two

S I X

Yraqia,
2020

★ ★ ★

SONG OF SONGS 1:4

Take me away with you -- let us hurry! Let the king bring me to his chambers.

★ ★ ★

Nura was nine years old when she got her first taste of another girl. It was nothing more than the simple flutter of soft lips against her own, but it had ruined her thereafter.

Her ruination had been named Raphaella Bosarge and she'd spent three weeks in her company sixteen years ago. They'd spent majority of their time with their ribcages pressed against the hand-woven Arabic carpet in Nura's nursery.

Monsieur Bosarge, the President of France at the time had taken a trip to the desert kingdom of Kediakin, much like the important political figures all over the world did from time to time.

His visit was special because he had brought along his youngest daughter and she was the same age as Nura.

For the first time in her life, Nura had a friend; a friend who was the same age and gender as her, who adored Disney Princess films and colouring. She had a friend who could fit into her bed and whom she could tell silly little things to in the dead of night while they were supposed to be sleeping.

Raphaella and Nura had been attached at the hip from the moment they met each other. Nura had been left to her own devices for as long as she could remember, but that summer, she had Rapahella.

They'd spend hours locked away in the nursery, oblivious to the outside world.

They formed a bond that went far beyond their childlike chemistry and maybe it had something to do with the fact that they were both so lonely in their personal lives. Their fathers were important men and they did important-men things which often left them neglected.

Raphaella wasn't a princess like Nura, but she understood the life of isolation the other girl lived. It was especially harder on her, because while Nura had her mother, grandmother and brothers; Rapahella was an only child to a widowed father.

Raphaella also happened to be the prettiest creature Nura had laid eyes on, with her porcelain skin, silky brunette hair and crisp blue eyes that reminded her of the Arabian sky on a clear summers' day. Her features were so stark in contrast to her own but Raphaella had thought her to be pretty too.

One day, they'd laid on the carpet of her nursery with the sun streaming in from the windows, bathing the both of them in warm light.

Raphaella was going to go back home in three days and Nura tried to act like it wasn't tearing her apart on the inside.

Once Rapahella was gone, she'd have to go back to her life of loneliness and she wasn't quite ready to let go of the safe haven she had found with the other girl.

Neither of them felt like colouring, or playing or doing any of the things they'd done for the past three weeks.

They just laid on their backs with a deafening silence thick in the air around them.