To Love A Prince

2.

***

"Hi."

That was all she could say. It wasn't nearly enough, but there was nothing else which came to mind that could ease Arafat's pain at the revelation. Even though he tried to smile for the sake of his brother, he only managed a grimace, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't look Nafisa in the eye. And although she was looking at him, almost nonchalantly, a single look at her face would have shown how distressed she was.

What did one say to someone whom they still loved, but could never be with again because fate had deemed otherwise? Nafisa hadn't chosen this path. It had been ordained that she would never be with Arafat, and even though she had tried to fight it at first, she soon came to realize that destiny had an entirely different life in store for her.

He looked nothing like she remembered, the bright-eyed teenager who would sit on the fence of her father's barn whenever he visited, and she would watch him from the window of her bedroom on the second floor. Her father, being the royal vizier, was always fond of Arafat's visits to his home, where he would pick his brain on the Sultan's activities in his absence. He would treat him like a highly esteemed guest, and together they would tend to the horses in the barn. It was here that Nafisa would always gaze at Arafat, and her heart would be filled with wonder and intrigue, on what exactly the young prince was thinking. He always looked so handsome, she thought. She had only met him once, but even then she had to rush back to her room before her father saw her.

So when Arafat made the first move, and he snuck into the house late one night while she was sitting in the garden and working on her knitting, Nafisa was astonished. She nearly cried out in terror, but Arafat quickly alerted her to his true identity and she visibly relaxed.

It turned out that all those times she had been watching him, Arafat had been watching her as well. And as much as he knew her father would one day propose a union between them, he wanted to know her for himself before something like that was thrust upon him.

And thus began their regular evening rendezvous. He would visit her father, then after leaving late in the evening and ensuring that the vizier had seen him off, Arafat would climb over the walls and back into the garden where Nafisa would be waiting for him. They would sit for a long time and he would tell her tales of the old days which his nursemaid used to tell him about. He would recount several historic battles to her, in the way that his father had narrated them to him. Arafat knew so much about everything, and Nafisa was always fascinated by him. She would listen to everything he said with wonder and a feverish curiosity which could never be tamed. She wanted to know more, and Arafat would always tell her something new everyday. It was nothing but an innocent meeting, of two souls who found comfort in each other's presence.

But somewhere along the line, love crept into their hearts. There was no particular point when it did, but both of them woke up one day and realized that their lives would be pointless without the other. For Nafisa, it would mean losing her gateway into the world at large, a world which was not meant for women such as herself. Her life would always be spent within four walls at all times. Once she left her father's house, it would be for a husband's, and that would be her final abode until her death. And that terrifying thought was what kept her up at night.

But for Arafat, he would be losing a friend, someone who offered him an escape from the palace life. Nafisa made him feel normal, like the weight of his noble birth meant nothing. He could be himself with her, and he could be assured that no one else in the world would know him the way she did, or make him feel the way she made him feel.

Looking at her now, however, a woman in her own right, he wasn't so sure that he knew her anymore. She was still as beautiful as he remembered, with just a shadow of unfamiliarity to her. The years had done nothing to deplete what had always been a remarkable beauty, one which had driven men to write poetry in her name, and the belief that they could court her somehow. She was the fairest in the land, more beautiful than any woman to have ever set foot in Azrah. Not even Arafat's mother, who had once been considered the most beautiful woman in the land, could compare to Nafisa.