The land tasted Saedís before it ever knew her heart-beat, or the thousand other cadent things within her breast and body. A wind, stealing and smiling and swift, had torn the ribbons of scent from her hair, some time ago; and had littered them on the breaking back of every frond, on each leaf´s eager face. Another gale had stripped the musk from her skin, like a courtesan´s swathe of silk, and tossed it to a brother, and he to a sister; and thus, those tiny morsels of Saedís have traipsed the world. A thousand winds and plants and arborous things have known her, though not her name; but perhaps it was written somewhere, in that blend of attar, of jasmine herb under starlight, of lonely pines on a mountain, of warm skin on dead earth. These odors, and a brocade of stardust across her eyes, were all that she had possessed beyond her flesh – and they were waiting for her, on the boughs of the Forest.
She dreams – as she is wont to do, dancing beneath the stars. Oh, she dreams of dark-skinned princes and midnight trysts – and there is laughter in her eye and starlight under her feet. She twirls and pirouettes around the trees – a whimsical thing spun of innocence and starglow. What did she ever know of heartbreak and ruin?
His words came to her before her sky-bound eyes could spot him in the darkness. They were quietly spoken, and should have gone unheard for the hiss of a rankled wind was louder. But it was the very gentleness wreathing his summons that reached her. Thus, uncertain, trembling – she sought him. And when she reached him, she knew it was he by the darkness that framed his face; it was the same shadows that coated his voice and made it beautiful.
”Good evening, stranger in the night.” she smiles – and there is star-glimmer in that smile. ”I am Saedís”
@[sleaze]