they tell us how to live

It comes as no surprise to the young mare that Rigel is quick to notice her lonely vigil. While Shahrazad could fault none of the Stars, nor claim this one more alert than that one, during the time she’d spent among them, safe and secure, she’d noted that Rigel was the most attentive to her emotional state. If she were to be honest (and bold), the flaxen maned mare would assert that perhaps her opinion was slanted by her experiences. There was, after all, a connection between them that Shahrazad had not found with any other here - a meeting of the minds, and what may be a similar way of experiencing the world. Rigel abounded with wisdom, and all Shahrazad really had were her stories, and traces of wisdom could be found in them.

“It is all those things, Rigel, and more,” the red and white mare replies quietly, her sky-blue gaze turning attentively toward her white-speckled companion. A tender smile curls across her lips, and the hurting heart beating in her breast feels the sting of being left behind a little less. “Your words bring comfort, and I am grateful for them, but the truth is, I felt no real belonging with his People.” It is not her intent to diminish the kindness of his words. Rather, in her own way, she seeks to reassure Rigel, and to perhaps she’d a little more light on her past. In all the tales, not once has she told of her own past (as brief as it may be), beyond the fact that she was kept among Kahraman’s kind for a time.

“And I have no memory of belonging anywhere before that,” Shahrazad continues softly, allowing her gaze to wander as she speaks - over the Sadim, and out across the rolling hills of sand. “But here... it feels right here, under the care and protection of you and your brothers, and the Malik over yonder.” Her attention turns towards the place where the golden bay Teke often roams among his own. “Though I cannot discern where I will yet fit, I have faith that I will find my place among you.”

It is some moments before she turns back to Rigel, and when she does, there is more than a little apprehension; in the subtle tightening of her shoulders, the Momentary creasing of her pale face, a flicker in the depths of her blue eyes, and when she speaks again, a tenuous tremor in her hushed voice, threading through words whispered like they are shameful, and to be kept secret.

”How can he take with him that which he rejected, though it had been offered freely, and without asking anything in return?” In a moment of despondency, Shahrazad tucks her muzzle to her chest, as if to hide the remnants of her sorrow (and the deep rooted cause of them) behind the golden veil of her mane. ”Perhaps he sensed it for the flawed thing it is, and that is why he did not want it.” The tears gather in her voice instead of welling in her eyes, and she draws in breath to steady herself.

“What use is an incomplete heart, Rigel? How can one trust in any love such a heart professes to lay claim to, when it does not truly know its own depths?” A pause, and a drawn out silence, and finally the only Truth Shahrazad can really lay claim to. “I do not know who I am.”

All she had was her stories.

Shahrazad;