Disclaimer: I do not own these wonderful characters.
It wasn't anything unusual, I guess. Genie would probably tell me "That sort of thing happens, Al." Still. It was a first for me. Jasmine never reminded me of my mother ordinarily. If anything, she reminded me of her namesake: a precious flower, fierce in scent and soft to touch.
I watched her from a tree branch in the Palace garden now. The calm blue sky, so sea-resembling, with its clouds like liquid foam, grazed a sprinkle of flying doves.
Jasmine petted Raja, quietly murmuring an old lullaby I never heard before. She sang it for the sixth time, with the words coating her pet tigers' fur and washing over her father, The Sultan, as he slumbered on the rings of the courtyard fountain nearby. Abu nestled deeper into my side, drowsily pulling part of my patched clothes over his frame.
"Dreams slowly crept...
upon the glass men-a-ger-ie.
And with every step,
I gained a jewel which came to me..."
I hummed along. She smiled up at me, pausing only briefly, and continued. Hearing her, seeing her, finally being with her-regardless of my being no prince-drifted it up. My mother mirrored herself again and again in my mind's eye. I saw her tickling the soles of my feet years ago, teasing me as she said, "You'll have to clean up all the naughty roads you took." (Even now, I never knew how she learned of my boyish, less-than-gentlemanly escapades.) I saw her dancing with me, weaving stories from the droplets of imagination clutched onto my body. My mother-I saw her, on this day before the wedding. I saw her-alive. I saw her with more clarity than ever before.
Why couldn't she be here?
"Bah bah," Abu snored.
Still.
I lightly ruffled the top fur of my animal companion.
I greeted The Sultan as he yawned, steadily waking.
I tossed the only relic of my mother's existence, outside myself, to the most important woman breathing in my life now.
"Jasmine!"
It winked in the wind, beneath the Heavens, and landed against the chest of her. She caught it, twirled it in the air.
It was for her. All of it-my memories, my body, my love...all of it. It could only be for her.
My mother's smiling face faded...and faded. I would see her again, I was sure, when Jasmine held our first born. Until then...
Jasmine hooked it to her neck. Cradling Abu, I climbed down to her.
"It's," I said, "the diamond-in-the-rough. It's... the only diamond I had before I met you."