Threads of Gold

Nineteen | انیس

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Her worn eyes strained with the effort to open up in the face of the darkness and thin slices of night that filtered through what the cracks in her surrounding walls allowed.

She knew the sun had set and risen several times since she'd been captured and left to await her unknown fate in Kalthura.

Time was a paheli.

It was never constant, akin to the rampant waves of a river - willing to change the shape of the surface it shared with the land if it meant moving on but, sometimes, water fell stagnant and people became stuck in the past.

A similar thing happened with Nusrat. After a few moments of feeling the silvery sheet of the moonlight upon her face, the mature handmaiden decided to close her eyes to signify her battle against dusk as lost again before thinking back to the moment that brought her where she was.

It was some days ago, the exact numeral was lost in a sea of the Sherquli woman's memory but she starkly remembered the moment she realized that Zartasha had disappeared.

That afternoon under the hot Kalthuran sun and the supervision of Sherquli officials, the shehzadi had run off to do what she wanted but whatever it was, Nusrat prayed it would end up in the Fahim heir's best interest.

She grew worried and to put a stop to the ever-increasing restlessness of the Sherquli guards that shadowed their journey, she quickly spoke to the soldier beside her after pointing at one of the many looming caves of worn thread.

"I believe that's the tent the shehzadi went into, I will accompany her back here."

When the rigid sentinel slowly nodded in response, the handmaiden could tell an invisible countdown determining the shehzadi's fate had already begun.

As the humid breeze rippled across the fabric of her loose kameez and the sand particles around her feet felt like they were stuck in her throat, Nusrat realized she now had no choice but to enter the random night-shaded tent at the end of her thick finger.

While making her way forward, the Sherquli woman prayed to find the shehzadi in there by some miracle but what greeted her when she lifted the flap of the tent's entrance terrified her.

It seemed as if the triad of Kalthuran soldiers there were waiting distinctly for her.

And that was the last moment she recollected of being able to stand in a place out of her own free will.

✸ ✸ ✸

The sky that night was a ballad of the Malka's evasive blue smoke and the Sultan's charred patience.

Twilight in Kalthura was a vision foreigners always had mentions of on their reminiscent tongues after having made it out of the black hole-like mulk alive but Zartasha was alarmed at the way the glittering moon appeared to hang low enough to touch.

She paused her racing steps when she understood how nature eclipsed her reality in that moment and it was as if time had stood still. The Sherquli shehzadi concluded that if she wanted to achieve true power in her world, then she would have to use her status as Kalthura's Malka faultlessly. She thought about how she could have the moon resting in her palm if she wanted to and all because she was in the Hyderi mehal's glass-stained walls, as the queen of the land's ruler.

Zartasha realized that, ironically, the chances of increasing her propinquity to her rightful throne were greater if she stayed under the Kalthuran sky for now, rather than suffocating in the dense Sherquli air.

She knew she had to play her cards cautiously from this point onwards, maybe even bear the Sultan's lovesick words and maddened gaze, if she wanted to get to where she knew she belonged - as Malka of her own land, ruling with an iron fist.