[fanfic] scheherezade
21/6/09 13:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karriezaiTitle: Scheherezade
Genre: Fanfiction
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~ 2,000
For the Fifty Sentences challenge at RCR--this time I actually finished. I found a subject that worked. :) So it's the story of Scheherezade, with what may be a slightly different spin.
#01 - Motion
The world spins as she is jerked from her father’s grasping arms; she can hear him crying out, “No, not my daughter!” but the men take her from him anyway.
#02 - Cool
Despite her resolve and her certainty that she can do this, her skin is cool with fear in the hot night air as they bring her to the palace.
#03 - Young
She is surprised by how young the king is beneath the haggardness that has aged him early; though her father is one of his advisors, she has never been allowed to see the king for fear of just this moment.
#04 - Last
With the quiet fear that this will be her last night in this world, she bows before the king and presses her forehead to the cool marble floor of his bedchamber.
#05 - Wrong
When she steals a peek upward at his face, the expression there is all wrong--there is no anger, madness, or even sorrow, just the deepest weariness masking a dim flicker of grief.
#06 - Gentle
She keeps her voice soft as she speaks to him: “I am called Scheherezade, majesty, and I am yours. What is your will?”
#07 - One
And then, before he can fall asleep and seal her fate after the deed is done, she comes to the riskiest part of this insane plan of hers: she begs of him one last request, and feels relief swell in her abdomen when he allows her to summon her sister to say goodbye.
#08 - Thousand
Dinazade has been well prepared; when she enters the room, her eyes are only barely red with tears, and she bows before the king and begs that he allow her sister to tell her one last story (one of thousands which Scheherezade is prepared to tell).
#09 - King
He looks more a king in this moment than at any before during the night, and the regal mask terrifies Scheherezade with the twisting doubt that he might say no, but he relents before the young, grief-stricken face of Dinazade.
#10 - Learn
She starts safe with a story that is more intrigue and excitement than moral; tonight her goal is to live, with the hope that in the future she will have time to learn how far she can push the king’s boundaries with her stories.
#11 - Blur
The night passes as a blur of words and quiet anxiety; even if she wasn’t telling the story, she wouldn’t be able to sleep the way Dinazade does, curled up in her lap.
#12 - Wait
She finishes the story just as dawn colors the eastern sky, and the king begs for another--this is the next dangerous part: teasing him with a hint of the next story she has to tell, one she won’t have time to tell until the next night, and waiting to see if it buys her life for another day.
#13 - Change
Life in the palace is a change from the life she knew with her father, but she can’t really appreciate the cool marble, tinkling fountains, and perfumed gardens with fear curled in the back of her mind because the king’s executioner could come for her at any moment.
#14 - Command
She makes it until nightfall and waits on the king’s bed, wrapped in perfume and silk by the palace maids; this time she doesn’t need Dinazade once she has finished pleasing the king, because this time he commands her himself to tell the next story.
#15 - Hold
A month passes in this manner; forgiving the anxiety that is slow to wane (what if he grows tired of her stories and decides to execute her like the others?), this isn’t such a bad life, though she does sometimes wish the king would hold her like lovers do after making love.
#16 - Need
Scheherezade is a woman--she needs love like any other, especially when surrounded by a constant sense of fear.
#17 - Vision
It doesn’t take long for her vision of the king to clarify: he is a handsome man, though his weariness makes him look too old, and if she looks past the terror he inspires because of all the women he’s taken to bed and killed since his wife betrayed him, she can see that he was once a good man who went astray.
#18 - Attention
She spends hours each day choosing which story to tell next; she has to put careful attention into the choice, since she is doing more now than trying to extend her life--she is trying to guide the king back into the man she knows he can still be.
#19 - Soul
The king gradually grows to trust her more--she knows this by the little displays of faith he shows in letting her visit or father or spend a day with her sister, and this birth of trust is almost as good for her soul as the time spent with her family.
#20 - Picture
Each moment with Dinazade and her father feels like borrowed time, since she was secretly prepared to die that first night she spent with the king despite all her grand hopes and plans, and so she had memorized each of their faces to picture if she faced the executioner and said all her goodbyes long before the guards came to collect her.
#21 - Fool
Half a year after the first night, she realizes that she’s missed two of her monthly bloods, and the thought of the life growing in her belly makes her pale: she was a fool to forget the inevitable consequence of her nightly duty, and she has no idea what reaction to expect when the king finds out.
#22 - Mad
She means to tell him herself, but she is too frightened to do it right away; she regrets it when the king comes to bed with his face a mask of anger because he knows, but she feels a glimmer of hope when he puts his hand almost tenderly over her stomach and says, “You should have told me.”
#23 - Child
All the fear that came with her growing belly and the inevitable strains childbirth would bring to even a normal marriage goes away the instant she holds the infant in her arms; he is red and squalling and beautiful, and she can already see his father’s features mirrored more softly on his face.
#24 - Now
She places the babe into the king’s arms, and the look on his face warms her heart: now, for this moment at least, they are a family.
#25 - Shadow
Her son--Reshat, as the king named him--demands a lot of attention, and on nights when she is forced to leave the king to quiet the wailing infant, she can see a shadow pass over her husband’s face that makes her nervous.
#26 - Goodbye
Once again she says her goodbyes, just in case; if the king should grow displeased with her and have no need of her now that he has his heir, she doesn’t want her death to come as a surprise to her family.
#27 - Hide
But the child grows and learns quickly, and soon he is playing the silly game of hide-and-peek with his father, with Scheherezade laughing in the background; she does not think this happy family scene can be a prelude to disaster, so she forces herself to relax and trust in hope once again.
#28 - Fortune
Scheherezade is a beaming mother--Reshat is a treasure she’d never hoped to have, and soon her nightly stories take on even more desperate purpose, since she cannot be sure the king has grown enough to love and trust her fully and she cannot risk being separated from her son.
#29 - Safe
One night she tells the king one of her least favorite stories, and when tears well in her eyes against her will because of the sadness in the story, the king enfolds her in his arms--it’s the first time she’s felt truly safe within the palace, even if the feeling is fleeting.
#30 - Ghost
A young storyteller enchanted by the growing myth of what Scheherezade has accomplished seeks to meet with her at the palace--he is young and strong, and his very presence terrifies her because it awakens ghosts of the betrayal the king suffered at his wife’s hands that darken his features for weeks.
#31 - Book
Scheherezade finds that her wealth of stories is not as inexhaustible as she thought, and the realization could not have come at a worse time than when the king is feeling particularly vulnerable; Dinazade brings her books of tales from other lands, and she memorizes the stories by day, hoping they will suffice.
#32 - Eye
The world is never truer than through the eyes of a child; Scheherezade finds that as Reshat grows, he can tell his father’s moods, laughing when the king is feeling at peace and wailing at those times when the darkness in her husband’s eyes makes her shrink in fear.
#33 - Never
“I will never love another,” King Shahryar told his advisors, Scheherezade’s father included, “and I will never be betrayed again, for each wife I take to bed will be executed on the dawning of the next day.”
#34 - Sing
When the king allows singers and musicians into the palace once again, Scheherezade is so close to her hope she can feel it fluttering against the insides of her abdomen; there has been no music in the palace since his first wife died.
#35 - Sudden
“As you wish, my ki--” but he cuts her off suddenly with, “Shahryar,” and she lowers her face to disguise the leap of her heart and the color that rises to her cheeks.
#36 - Stop
After two years and two children, though Scheherezade feels the nudgings of love from Shahryar, she still cannot find the courage to suggest that she stop telling her nightly stories--not even for one night, no matter how tired or weak she feels.
#37 - Time
Time passes, and she realizes that the only ones who do not yet accept the steady nature of her place as queen are herself and, perhaps, Shahryar.
#38 - Wash
She tries to cleanse herself of doubt; it should be easy, as she certainly plays the role of his loving wife with ease, singing to him when he has trouble sleeping and wiping his forehead with a cool cloth when he is sick--but despite the years and the love she can’t deny in her heart, she has trouble trusting fully in Shahryar’s love for her.
#39 - Torn
Perhaps Shahryar cannot sense it, but Reshat and their other little ones can; when Reshat asks, “Mother, do you really love Father?” the most painful tearing sensation heats her chest and she cannot quite bring herself to say, “I do.”
#40 - History
“You have a past together,” Dinazade tells her, comforting her and stroking her hair--Scheherezade is amazed how much older and wiser her little sister has become, especially when she continues, “I think you do love him, but you cannot forgive him yet for the terror he made you feel at the beginning.”
#41 - Power
As a gift to Scheherezade, Shahryar promotes her father to his lead advisor, grants him lands and wealth, and arranges the perfect match for Dinazade--but she is not sure if it is out of love or guilt, and she is not sure whether the distinction should matter.
#42 - Bother
Why would a king bother to make amends with a woman, anyway, when he can have any woman he wants at any time?
#43 - God
Dinazade was right, but she was also wrong; Scheherezade prays to all the gods she knows when she realizes that she is jealous of Shahryar, because he still keeps a harem after all they have shared and all she has done--has suffered--for him.
#44 - Wall
She tries half-heartedly to tear down the wall her jealousy builds between them, if only to save herself from his wrath--but the truth is that she doesn’t fear his wrath anymore, because it has been over three years, and she can see the truth of his love for her in his eyes and in their children.
#45 - Naked
She goes to bed with Shahryar, but he frowns and pushes her away; when she kneels on the floor of his bedchamber, she tries to hide her emotions, but she is more naked than the very first night she came to him clothed in hopes and dreams.
#46 - Drive
“What have I done to drive you away?” Shahryar asks, and the pain in his voice twists something deep within her chest.
#47 - Harm
“Nothing,” she whispers, and it is both lie and truth; how can she explain that the harm he has done is loving her, not killing her, and yet reestablishing the harem that is within any king’s right and duty to have--all because she helped to restore his faith in women?
#48 - Precious
But somehow he knows--maybe she is more transparent than she thought, or maybe Dinazade is brazen enough to have told him--and he lifts her from the ground by her forearms and says, “You are the most precious thing in my life; I am sorry for what I have put you through since the first night you came to me, but you have to know that I would do anything to make it up to you now.”
#49 - Hunger
Tonight there is hunger in her kisses and lust in each caress of her hands over his body--Shahryar feels the fullness of her release and responds, his hands taking in every curve of her shape.
#50 - Believe
For the first time Scheherezade believes--really believes--in the miracle of love that arose from the desperation of their meeting.
Genre: Fanfiction
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~ 2,000
For the Fifty Sentences challenge at RCR--this time I actually finished. I found a subject that worked. :) So it's the story of Scheherezade, with what may be a slightly different spin.
#01 - Motion
The world spins as she is jerked from her father’s grasping arms; she can hear him crying out, “No, not my daughter!” but the men take her from him anyway.
#02 - Cool
Despite her resolve and her certainty that she can do this, her skin is cool with fear in the hot night air as they bring her to the palace.
#03 - Young
She is surprised by how young the king is beneath the haggardness that has aged him early; though her father is one of his advisors, she has never been allowed to see the king for fear of just this moment.
#04 - Last
With the quiet fear that this will be her last night in this world, she bows before the king and presses her forehead to the cool marble floor of his bedchamber.
#05 - Wrong
When she steals a peek upward at his face, the expression there is all wrong--there is no anger, madness, or even sorrow, just the deepest weariness masking a dim flicker of grief.
#06 - Gentle
She keeps her voice soft as she speaks to him: “I am called Scheherezade, majesty, and I am yours. What is your will?”
#07 - One
And then, before he can fall asleep and seal her fate after the deed is done, she comes to the riskiest part of this insane plan of hers: she begs of him one last request, and feels relief swell in her abdomen when he allows her to summon her sister to say goodbye.
#08 - Thousand
Dinazade has been well prepared; when she enters the room, her eyes are only barely red with tears, and she bows before the king and begs that he allow her sister to tell her one last story (one of thousands which Scheherezade is prepared to tell).
#09 - King
He looks more a king in this moment than at any before during the night, and the regal mask terrifies Scheherezade with the twisting doubt that he might say no, but he relents before the young, grief-stricken face of Dinazade.
#10 - Learn
She starts safe with a story that is more intrigue and excitement than moral; tonight her goal is to live, with the hope that in the future she will have time to learn how far she can push the king’s boundaries with her stories.
#11 - Blur
The night passes as a blur of words and quiet anxiety; even if she wasn’t telling the story, she wouldn’t be able to sleep the way Dinazade does, curled up in her lap.
#12 - Wait
She finishes the story just as dawn colors the eastern sky, and the king begs for another--this is the next dangerous part: teasing him with a hint of the next story she has to tell, one she won’t have time to tell until the next night, and waiting to see if it buys her life for another day.
#13 - Change
Life in the palace is a change from the life she knew with her father, but she can’t really appreciate the cool marble, tinkling fountains, and perfumed gardens with fear curled in the back of her mind because the king’s executioner could come for her at any moment.
#14 - Command
She makes it until nightfall and waits on the king’s bed, wrapped in perfume and silk by the palace maids; this time she doesn’t need Dinazade once she has finished pleasing the king, because this time he commands her himself to tell the next story.
#15 - Hold
A month passes in this manner; forgiving the anxiety that is slow to wane (what if he grows tired of her stories and decides to execute her like the others?), this isn’t such a bad life, though she does sometimes wish the king would hold her like lovers do after making love.
#16 - Need
Scheherezade is a woman--she needs love like any other, especially when surrounded by a constant sense of fear.
#17 - Vision
It doesn’t take long for her vision of the king to clarify: he is a handsome man, though his weariness makes him look too old, and if she looks past the terror he inspires because of all the women he’s taken to bed and killed since his wife betrayed him, she can see that he was once a good man who went astray.
#18 - Attention
She spends hours each day choosing which story to tell next; she has to put careful attention into the choice, since she is doing more now than trying to extend her life--she is trying to guide the king back into the man she knows he can still be.
#19 - Soul
The king gradually grows to trust her more--she knows this by the little displays of faith he shows in letting her visit or father or spend a day with her sister, and this birth of trust is almost as good for her soul as the time spent with her family.
#20 - Picture
Each moment with Dinazade and her father feels like borrowed time, since she was secretly prepared to die that first night she spent with the king despite all her grand hopes and plans, and so she had memorized each of their faces to picture if she faced the executioner and said all her goodbyes long before the guards came to collect her.
#21 - Fool
Half a year after the first night, she realizes that she’s missed two of her monthly bloods, and the thought of the life growing in her belly makes her pale: she was a fool to forget the inevitable consequence of her nightly duty, and she has no idea what reaction to expect when the king finds out.
#22 - Mad
She means to tell him herself, but she is too frightened to do it right away; she regrets it when the king comes to bed with his face a mask of anger because he knows, but she feels a glimmer of hope when he puts his hand almost tenderly over her stomach and says, “You should have told me.”
#23 - Child
All the fear that came with her growing belly and the inevitable strains childbirth would bring to even a normal marriage goes away the instant she holds the infant in her arms; he is red and squalling and beautiful, and she can already see his father’s features mirrored more softly on his face.
#24 - Now
She places the babe into the king’s arms, and the look on his face warms her heart: now, for this moment at least, they are a family.
#25 - Shadow
Her son--Reshat, as the king named him--demands a lot of attention, and on nights when she is forced to leave the king to quiet the wailing infant, she can see a shadow pass over her husband’s face that makes her nervous.
#26 - Goodbye
Once again she says her goodbyes, just in case; if the king should grow displeased with her and have no need of her now that he has his heir, she doesn’t want her death to come as a surprise to her family.
#27 - Hide
But the child grows and learns quickly, and soon he is playing the silly game of hide-and-peek with his father, with Scheherezade laughing in the background; she does not think this happy family scene can be a prelude to disaster, so she forces herself to relax and trust in hope once again.
#28 - Fortune
Scheherezade is a beaming mother--Reshat is a treasure she’d never hoped to have, and soon her nightly stories take on even more desperate purpose, since she cannot be sure the king has grown enough to love and trust her fully and she cannot risk being separated from her son.
#29 - Safe
One night she tells the king one of her least favorite stories, and when tears well in her eyes against her will because of the sadness in the story, the king enfolds her in his arms--it’s the first time she’s felt truly safe within the palace, even if the feeling is fleeting.
#30 - Ghost
A young storyteller enchanted by the growing myth of what Scheherezade has accomplished seeks to meet with her at the palace--he is young and strong, and his very presence terrifies her because it awakens ghosts of the betrayal the king suffered at his wife’s hands that darken his features for weeks.
#31 - Book
Scheherezade finds that her wealth of stories is not as inexhaustible as she thought, and the realization could not have come at a worse time than when the king is feeling particularly vulnerable; Dinazade brings her books of tales from other lands, and she memorizes the stories by day, hoping they will suffice.
#32 - Eye
The world is never truer than through the eyes of a child; Scheherezade finds that as Reshat grows, he can tell his father’s moods, laughing when the king is feeling at peace and wailing at those times when the darkness in her husband’s eyes makes her shrink in fear.
#33 - Never
“I will never love another,” King Shahryar told his advisors, Scheherezade’s father included, “and I will never be betrayed again, for each wife I take to bed will be executed on the dawning of the next day.”
#34 - Sing
When the king allows singers and musicians into the palace once again, Scheherezade is so close to her hope she can feel it fluttering against the insides of her abdomen; there has been no music in the palace since his first wife died.
#35 - Sudden
“As you wish, my ki--” but he cuts her off suddenly with, “Shahryar,” and she lowers her face to disguise the leap of her heart and the color that rises to her cheeks.
#36 - Stop
After two years and two children, though Scheherezade feels the nudgings of love from Shahryar, she still cannot find the courage to suggest that she stop telling her nightly stories--not even for one night, no matter how tired or weak she feels.
#37 - Time
Time passes, and she realizes that the only ones who do not yet accept the steady nature of her place as queen are herself and, perhaps, Shahryar.
#38 - Wash
She tries to cleanse herself of doubt; it should be easy, as she certainly plays the role of his loving wife with ease, singing to him when he has trouble sleeping and wiping his forehead with a cool cloth when he is sick--but despite the years and the love she can’t deny in her heart, she has trouble trusting fully in Shahryar’s love for her.
#39 - Torn
Perhaps Shahryar cannot sense it, but Reshat and their other little ones can; when Reshat asks, “Mother, do you really love Father?” the most painful tearing sensation heats her chest and she cannot quite bring herself to say, “I do.”
#40 - History
“You have a past together,” Dinazade tells her, comforting her and stroking her hair--Scheherezade is amazed how much older and wiser her little sister has become, especially when she continues, “I think you do love him, but you cannot forgive him yet for the terror he made you feel at the beginning.”
#41 - Power
As a gift to Scheherezade, Shahryar promotes her father to his lead advisor, grants him lands and wealth, and arranges the perfect match for Dinazade--but she is not sure if it is out of love or guilt, and she is not sure whether the distinction should matter.
#42 - Bother
Why would a king bother to make amends with a woman, anyway, when he can have any woman he wants at any time?
#43 - God
Dinazade was right, but she was also wrong; Scheherezade prays to all the gods she knows when she realizes that she is jealous of Shahryar, because he still keeps a harem after all they have shared and all she has done--has suffered--for him.
#44 - Wall
She tries half-heartedly to tear down the wall her jealousy builds between them, if only to save herself from his wrath--but the truth is that she doesn’t fear his wrath anymore, because it has been over three years, and she can see the truth of his love for her in his eyes and in their children.
#45 - Naked
She goes to bed with Shahryar, but he frowns and pushes her away; when she kneels on the floor of his bedchamber, she tries to hide her emotions, but she is more naked than the very first night she came to him clothed in hopes and dreams.
#46 - Drive
“What have I done to drive you away?” Shahryar asks, and the pain in his voice twists something deep within her chest.
#47 - Harm
“Nothing,” she whispers, and it is both lie and truth; how can she explain that the harm he has done is loving her, not killing her, and yet reestablishing the harem that is within any king’s right and duty to have--all because she helped to restore his faith in women?
#48 - Precious
But somehow he knows--maybe she is more transparent than she thought, or maybe Dinazade is brazen enough to have told him--and he lifts her from the ground by her forearms and says, “You are the most precious thing in my life; I am sorry for what I have put you through since the first night you came to me, but you have to know that I would do anything to make it up to you now.”
#49 - Hunger
Tonight there is hunger in her kisses and lust in each caress of her hands over his body--Shahryar feels the fullness of her release and responds, his hands taking in every curve of her shape.
#50 - Believe
For the first time Scheherezade believes--really believes--in the miracle of love that arose from the desperation of their meeting.