Loretta of the Lamp - The Fallout

Afterword

Light played over the golden city in colourful flickers and bursts. The lamp was about to set, and it was a beautiful sight. Loretta stood at the edge of the balcony watching. In her slender fingers she held a sheaf of paper that she turned over and over until she looked away from the setting light, to the picture on the paper. A sketch of a young girl with long, blonde, curly hair and wide eyes like hers, Claudia.

The fallout from the events on the mountain had seen Loretta seek solace in time alone. Time to process and to accept loss. In Morocco, she thought she'd let go of the life she once had, on realising she could never go back. But her desire for vengeance on the Djin king, the marauding Sultan of Morocco, had become all consuming. In the end her only real satisfaction was the belief that somehow she had empowered Enobia and Rashid to be able to take back the power that was rightfully theirs. By the time she returned to the lamp she had, out of brokenness, learned the audacity to believe that she'd been born for so much more.

And it was only now, in the true calm after the storm, that she'd begun to process it all.

Now that she understood who her father had been, she was able to grasp some of the answers to the 'why'. She knew the curse on her own life had destroyed her father and then backfired on the Djin king in pulling her into the lamp when she accidentally summoned Akil the first time.

Perhaps Misbah, or even the lamp itself had sensed her presence, and summoned her home, recognising her father's blood.

And yet, she was joined to Akil by a force they did not understand. The Djin king had not understood it, and nor were Tama, Arani or any of the palace scholars able to shed light on it.

She folded the parchment over in her fingers. Fingers adept at opening doors were now set to close a final door. In her hands, the paper began to crackle as dark blue flame consumed it and the crude sketch of her sister dissolved into ash on the wind.

Loretta exhaled and turned her eyes to the horizon. She never tired of watching the frantic lamplight as it changed, flickering for dear life, a candle in the wind desperate not to go out with the onset of night. But it would return in the morning, and aside from the beauty of the phenomenon, it was the knowledge that the light would always return that gave Loretta peace.

There were only a small handful of Jinni in the lamp who felt moments like these as intimately as she did. Tama and Arani did, but they were now on their way to the hinter-most lands of the lamp, Or and Ao in the far north, the provinces known as the 'deadlands' which had been abused by the Djin king for sacrifices of children so relentlessly that there were rumoured to be none of the younger generation left, only an ageing remnant that would soon die out. A population no longer strong enough to protect themselves from the attack of the Jin outside their city walls. Tama and Arani knew they had to go home, to see the damage for themselves, to see if anything could be done. They had been dutifully escorted by Bennou, and Loretta wondered every day when they would hear news.

There were three more sleepers in the mountain who would have felt the set and rise of the light every day, but in the weeks that had followed the waking, these three child sacrifices still had not stirred, despite Akil returning to the mountain every other day to look for signs of change.

Misbah herself, did not stir either.

Hien would feel it too, and she often sat with Loretta to watch the light set, but today Hess' sister was elsewhere. One day soon Hien would return to Dēng, the province which was hers to rule, but she was still young, and though she was unlikely to age physically now that she was awake, she had a lot to learn about herself and about her people, just as they all did.

When Akil had sent out the proclamation to all nine provinces of the lamp announcing the defeat and passing of the Djin King, the advisors of the court in Misbah had declared him King. He had quickly declined and announced that he would eventually have to return to Doua, his own province, lest it fall in the way Hikari had. Hikari, the long neglected province and home of the Djin King which had been left to fall with moving the seat of his power to Misbah. A council was set up to rule from Misbah in the days after Akil declined the offer of Kingship. Even Hien and Loretta were called to sit on the council, it was their duty for the creatures they were to learn everything about the Lamp and its people.