A Thief's Gold: Ardeth Bay x Reader [Discontinued]

Chapter II - seize

Arriving early into Cairo was a treat. There was fresh pastries, piles of warm flatbread and scorching, fragrant tea awaiting me before the sun fully rose. No one made better Flatbread then my great friend Jida Humairah (Grandma Humairah). They were otherworldly: they held the most fragrant cumin and mustard seeds, and the most filling dough in the whole of Cairo.

I started to head to her stool as I admired the amount of people already bustling for the day ahead. Men and woen carring rattan baskets over their head, or clay pots to their stools. The light greetings between vendors as they set up their censers and dishes of sweets, fruit and vegetables. It truly was a site to be blessed with before the echoes of shouts from vendors and bustling of the streets were present.

 As I approached Jida's stool, I saw her beaming a wide smile at me as she filled a paper bag with flatbread to an early customer. I beamed back as the smell of her flatbread wafted through the streets.

I felt almost like I was in a dream when I thought of Jida. She was always great friends with my Tafli. Ever since our village started to lose people as the city was developing without us, Jida tried to persuade my Tafli to move us closer to the city. But my mum was rooted to her home. She found solace in the village and couldn't bare leaving the place she moved to with her husband that gave us to her as a bearing gift before he left the land without us. So Jida left, but with the promise to bring us all we need to survive alone in the abandoned village.

After all, I never knew my Al'ab (dad) and neither did my 'ukht (sister). I always wondered where the Talisman came from that hung around my neck, as well as the ones on my sister and Tafli. We all had different one that has different stones in them. If you held them to the light they illuminated the room with millions of stars. Tafli told us they were given by Him to show his love, but I always wondered if that love faded from the necklaces as the years passed.

As I sat down on a seat in front of Jida, I tore the hot flatbread bestowed upon me to pieces and stuffed them down like a starved wolf.

"Asalam alaikum Jida. How are you?" I murmured through my stuffed mouth, my eyes gleaming with the Sun's beams.

"Walaikumsalam. I'm well my child. How are you and your family? It's been a long time since I last saw them. "

"You mean a couple of days? " I chuckled, "I'm okay. They are doing well, but I can tell my sister is starting to get restless."

"Ah... Have you asked your tafli to bring her here?"

"Yes. She said she'll be coming over tomorrow morning to stay."

"That's wonderful! I thought she would say no."

There was a slight pause that filled the air as I swallowed the piece of torn flatbread, "...she nearly did," I quickly passed as I drank my fill of water from my canteen.

I heard Jida sigh as she turned to check on the oven, "of course, your mother is always wary."

Turning back towards me, she passed a frsh cup of chai towrds me as she sat in front of me, "you know, she's going to find out you don't work at the tea shop across if she's coming tomorrow. How are you going to explain that to her?"

"I'll pretend I work with you. Always works doesn't it?"

"How many times have I told you it is dangerous to be an Assassin? A thief? "

I rolled my eyes to her daily question. How many times do I have to tell her I'm not one?

"You know I have no choice. And I'm not an Assassin, or a thief, or whatever else you want to call me. I'm just a normal human helping out their city, am I not? Working normally brings us barely anything. And it's the easiest way to find where Al'ab went. I need to... speak to him."