A cool breeze blew through the corridors, causing the hairs at the name of my neck to prickle and rise, a peculiar sensation given the amount of fur coating my body. My vision went blurry, as if my eyes were dry. I blinked, and the sensation went away. Cove and Sinbad pulled ahead of the pack, trotting quietly across the floors. An odd, familiar sensation building inside my head.
I growled quietly, shaking my head at the concerned looks the others shot at me. Cove’s ears flattened, and he jerked his nose in the direction we were heading as if to say ‘not too much further.’
I glanced at the corner ahead, intending to look for trouble. My vision warped once more, and I found myself desperate to know what lay beyond. In a daze, I followed the tugging sensation. The lights blurred, shrunk, and expanded, the corridor tilting and morphing. My footsteps changed, and I stumbled forward as my paws were replaced with feet, the carpet beneath my feet with marble. Sunlight cascading in through the skylight blinded me, my eyes burning as they refocused.
“Tales From a Thousand and One Nights, huh?” A quiet female voice pondered from behind me.
I spun, catching a faint, glostlike glimpse of a person standing behind a bookshelf. She reached up, standing on her tiptoes to pull down a heavy tome from the top shelf. Her fingers thumbed through the pages, and she smiled, snapping the book shut and swirling her head around. Her eyes landed on me, and she headed in my direction.
I opened my mouth to speak, but she didn’t slow. Before I could even think to move out of the way she walked through me. I spun, watching as she continued unhesitantly to a chair in the corner, past familiar-looking columns. She reclined back, flipped the book open, and began to read.
The sun was warm against my skin, and I watched the dust form the books float quietly through the air. The empty, light smell and sensation of a dry heat entered my nose, my entire body warming.
“I have heard, O King of the Age, that there dwelt in a city of China a poor tailor who had a son named Aladdin…..” said a woman with a voice that pulled you in. The beam of sunlightlight shifted in front of my eyes from overhead to the side, peeking in through the window of a shop. A man and a woman–husband and wife, perhaps?--stood behind the counter, smiling as customers picked up and purchased their wares. A small, wiry boy–Aladdin?-- tucked himself behind the shelves, playing with toys while his family worked.
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The couple pulled him from his nook, and lectured him as he nodded attentively. The young man watched the couple leave through the window, waving with a smile every time they looked back with suspicion. He waited once they’d past out of sight, mouthing the seconds as they passed. Finally, he sprinted out the store and into the alleyway, where a group of boys his age gathered.
A leaf drifted from the tree overhead, passing infront of the eyes, and the scenery changed form fall to winter. The woman stood in the doorway, stone faced as the man’s body was carried from the store. Passerbys offered consolation for her loss.
And so the story of Aladdin continued, unfolding before my eyes, and I fell deeper and deeper into the story, at times feeling as though I were Aladdin or the Sultan themselves.
As chains were shackled around my wrists and ankles, a deep ringing echoed through the air, startling me from my vision.
The lights and shadows morphed once more, but the shackles and the feet stayed. I blinked slowly as my mind whirled piecing together what had happened. A voice like the crashing ocean waves that dragged you beneath the waves spoke, and I tilted my head to see the stunning visage of a woman in a light purple dress and a deep purple shash that flowed like the wind as she dipped her head into a deep bow. “I shall take care of this scoundrel, my dear husband.”
A chubby man, dressed in similar colors with far more jewels adorning him and the feathred crown I recgonized from the Storyteller’s tale raged beyond her, his face nearly as purple as his dressage. I ignored him, my attention drawn to who must be Shahrazad. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, I noticed as I scanned her form for the item granting her such power over stories.
The odd shape against her leg struck my notice as she stood straight, her dress pressing against sharp corners. She turned to me, and the shifting lines revealed to me a book, hidden in the pockets of her dress. The shash shifted forward to hide the book, and her warm gaze drifted to her book, than to meet my eyes.
She nodded sharply, and gestured over me. “Take him to the dungeons.”
My arms were gripped with bruising force as they lifted me to my feet, placing me down so harshly I stumbled. Uncaring, they lifted me higher and dragged me along the floor, my new boots scuffing against the carpet.
Chaos broke out in the hallways around us, an alarm ringing loudly in the air. The guard’s hands all turned to me in unison to glare, their footsteps unfaltering even as other guards and mamluks rushed past us.
They shoved open the heavy metal prison door to an empty dungeon.