The entire tray shimmered in the golden light. It was a banquet made not from
abundance, but from exile and ingenuity. Rafiq without a word handed Zayn a carved
spoon and a folded cloth, then sat beside him. Here, in this tent suspended between
stars and memory, a warm meal was the oldest form of trust. Zayn hadn’t realized how
hungry he was. When the first bite touched his tongue, his body reminded him. He was
starving. He ate rapidly but gratefully, each bite bringing warmth back into his limbs. As
he ate, Rafiq began to speak.
He was born beneath a cracked sky, on the moon-world of Qamaruun, a place of
red horizons and whispering stone. The air tasted of salt and copper. Storms brewed
not from clouds but from magnetic shifts, flaring silently across the sky like fire caught in glass.
Beneath its bright sun, the surface baked to a brittle crust by day and froze to
bone-deep cold at night. Its ground was carved by ancient winds into fossil dunes and
jagged salt chasms. Yet even in this place, beauty endured.
Threaded through the desert were subterranean oases caverns, warmed by
thermal vents and lit by glowing algae that bloomed in watering pools. There, pockets of
life pulsed in defiance: gardens of thickleaf grain, lantern fruits, and violet reed flowers
that would sing in wind tunnels.
The people built stone domes and mirror-spined tents atop rocky plateaus, their
homes shaped to follow the arc of the moons. At night, they lit starlight lanterns that
swayed like fireflies. Music rose from quartz flutes and drums carved from the bones of
dead beasts.
They buried their dead facing Nur-Shahar, even though they had never seen it,
only dreamed of it, and tasted its memory in the tears of their elders.
Rafiq’s childhood passed in those dunes.
Between the howl of dust serpents and the hush of drifting sand.
He watched solar storms bloom like ghost flowers across the horizon.
Rafiq chuckled as he tapped the slender device hanging from his belt, a weather
harmonizer, polished smooth from decades of use. “When I was no older than you,” he
told Zayn, “I carried one of these on the high plains. Looks like a flute, eh? But no tune
for men, only wind. Fast wind, sharp note. Heavy sand, low and mournful. By its song, I
knew: storms or dust waiting past the horizon.” His eyes glimmered, lost briefly in the
memory. “That wind-song saved more of ours than any blade I ever swung.”
Now, in his seventh or eighth decade, Rafiq had outlived lovers, friends, and
language itself. He moved with economy. Spoke with measured weight. And listened
with terrible precision.
Rafiq’s gaze drifted toward the doorway, where Ayman’s shadow had passed
earlier in the evening. His voice softened, a rough whisper wrapped in warmth. “Only
Ayman stays by me now,” he declared. “A boy from Qamaruun. The desert took his
mother and father, took near everything from him. He knows no kin but me and the
Light. Yet, hear me, Zayn, the desert did not harden that child’s heart. No. He’s gentle
still, eager, kind. A flame that refuses to die, even when the wind tries to snuff it. I love
him as my blood. I’ll teach him all I know, every scrap of wisdom these old bones carry.
I’ll prepare him for the years to come.”
Rafiq paused, his eyes glinting. “That is all we can do, boy—shape those who
come after us so the Light does not fade.” The day would come when Rafiq would pass
into the next life, and Ayman would remain behind, a flicker of warmth on a sandy moon
far from home.
Zayn placed the carved spoon on the hovering tray’s edge. The food still
beckoned to him warmly, but his appetite had diminished. With his hands resting lightly
on his lap, he leaned back and looked at the folds of the tent canopy, where the light
from the desert danced across the weave like candle smoke. He didn’t say anything. He
was not pressed by Rafiq. It was peaceful and quiet in the tent.
Finally, Zayn spoke, his voice quiet and fragile at first. His voice sounded
fractured, akin to something that had once been whole, now struggling to reassemble
under the burden of memory. He closed his eyes. He began to remember.
Not the war.
Not the fire.
Not the fall.
But before.
A palace of marble and mirrored light.
Laughter echoing down endless corridors.
The sound of two boys, brothers, racing across floating bridges beneath a city
that kissed the clouds.
Before destiny became a burden.
Before love became a battlefield.
Before names like ‘traitor’ and ‘exile’ had ever been spoken.
In the shadow of the Zaryan throne, under the gaze of the Eternal Light.
Zayn al-Zaryan was just a boy.
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