Nikrin Alfin sat on a floor pillow in a yurt decorated with intricate tapestry and necklaces of golden coins. The coins reflected yellow light that was thrown unto the drapery hidden walls of the yurt. The Sahra people, though not nomadic in nature, never came around to building permanent homes. Preferring the makeshift structures and the caverns in the stone mountains that dotted the horizon of the Sahra region. The region itself was a depressing sight for sore eyes, with only sand and beige rocky mountains as far as the eye could see. It had always bemused him why anyone would stay in such a place when there were much better places to live. Ones with at least a semblance of greenery and life…Maybe they reminisced of ancient times when the Sahra region was told to have blossomed with exquisite plants and water flowed from the heavens down the now dry mountains. Smooth grooves, the only evidence left behind by a grand past. There had to be a reason. He nodded and chowed down on a biscuit as dry as the Sahra region. But he could not understand the reason. He rubbed his chin and sighed. There was a tension in the air, or maybe it was just the dryness. It made him shift uncomfortably.

“How’s the girl doing?” he asked.

“She’s as ready as she’ll ever be,” she replied.

He lifted an eyebrow, “you mean to say she is not ready?”

“I mean to say she is a stubborn one.”

The tension increased tenfold. There was an apprehension in the old woman’s voice. She sighed and rested her head on a hand. A melancholy air was upon them.

“Damn hag,” he mumbled and grabbed for another biscuit. When he was nervous, he ate and oh, was he nervous now. Everything had to be perfect, or else- he swallowed forcefully. Or else, they would both die at the hands of that tyrannical bastard. He had a wife, he had children, he still had things to do. A shiver ran down his spine. Those calculating eyes burned into his memories. What prince? No, he was a monster who would not die. A heartless creature. He almost felt pity for the girl but shook it away. She was trained for this. If anyone could get him on the good side of the prince, it would be her. Yes, he looked down onto a small painting of the Valeha. Hair that shone like flowing gold and eyes the color of the ocean. Yes, she was his hope.

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“A flower cannot bloom without nurture,” the woman said, breaking a long silence.

“A flower?” he grumbled.

“She is a tool, the gods know, he will treat her as much.”

Nikrin sighed. The old hag’s mood infiltrating his own. Looking at the old witch, he felt his own age. He was getting old. The journey was more difficult than it had been twenty years ago when he had left the girl here. What a long time to wait for the tree of his labor to bear fruits, he thought. He had seen a Valeha before when he was a young boy when his father was still alive. Mumbdali’s first concubine was a beautiful woman the likes he had never seen before. The Valehas seemed to move in such a way that commanded the attention of both men and women. The Valeha a sacred light to which, they, the moths were drawn to. She was elegant, but would this one match the old royal concubine? The stress of imperial life was getting to him. It had aged him, his once black hair now a pepper gray. He did not have the vitality he used to, soon, he would have to hand over his role to his own son like his father had done before but he had to guarantee the safety of his son before that.

“Felisima, I am getting old,” he said, solidifying that fact for himself.

The old woman mumbled some ancient words that even she had lost the meaning of, words her own mother used to say when lost in melancholic thought, and glanced over at the old man who sat next to her before allowing her gaze to travel back to the mountains. “We have lived a while, it seems,” she replied. Her eyes glazing over with memories of the past. “too long,” she whispered. And for a moment she could see herself with Nikrin in the same place fifteen years ago. A young northern child clinging to his side, so small, so frightened, but with eyes full of curiosity. Her body felt lighter, and she looked down at her hands, breaking out of the trance, the skin leathered and wrinkled with age.

“Will the gods judge me harshly?” she mumbled to no one but herself.

“You should worry more about how he will judge you,”

“Only the gods can judge me, and it is their judgment that I fear.”

“The living should not fear ethereal beings, Felisima,” Alfin sighed, running his free hand through his beard, “I have grown paranoid and anxious with age.”