Longing

Prologue: Karim

Prologue: Karim

                Tomorrow is the last day of the year we were given, and I don’t know who she will choose.

                I know that she has come to care for me, though she cannot tell me so in words. I can see it in the soft looks she sends my way, in the faint smile that comes over her face occasionally, in the way she dances for me even as her feet bleed, even as I beg her to stop.

                I do not know if her fondness for me is enough reason for her to stay.

                I was foolish, a year ago, to think that winning her heart would be easy, that I would have her hand within a month. I was foolish to never doubt that she would choose me.

                But though I love her—though I have loved her from the moment I first saw her—I know that my love for her may not be enough. Though I could give her castles and gowns and glittering jewels, I do not know if she wants them.

                I do not know if she wants me.

                I have learned much about her by watching her in this year. I have seen the way her eyes are drawn to the sea; I have seen the pain etched in every line of her face as she remembers that she is separated from it, from her home, perhaps forever. I have watched as she opens her mouth to speak, to reply to any of the thousands of things I’ve said to her, only to realize yet again that she cannot in my world. In the world that I wish would be hers.

                How can I ask her to sacrifice so much for the love of one, mortal man?

                How can I not ask her to stay, when I love her so?

                How can I live if she chooses him?

                These questions plague me and make me doubt the fool who was so confident a year ago. The one who asked the witch for a girl who didn’t belong to him; a girl who never should.

                I am selfish. If nothing else, she has taught me this. Instead of her lover, I am her jailer. I have kept her here against her will, no matter how much she may have grown to care for me and this world so removed from her beloved sea.

                For this, my greatest sin, there is no penance.

                And so tonight, before the sun rises on the final day, I will tell her all that I have done. I will confess to her and lay myself at her feet and pray for forgiveness that I do not deserve.

                And then I will let her choose, even if she does not choose me.