She loved the sun and danced in its glory. It was beautiful to her. It would bring new promises and hopes whenever it came.
She and her people lead simple lives in their oasis village by the northern desert border. Long ago, it was said that their ancestors were nomads who decided to settle down to stop and look at the wonders of life with full appreciation.
Perhaps that was why she loved hearing tales from far and wide from travellers and merchants who came, though she had no desire to leave her home. She was happy here as a weaver, weaving out beauty from a single thread.
She loved the sun and the day that it brings out new things.
She had met the man when she was out to buy some materials from a merchant. He was filthy and rugged, asking her friend for a job. She could tell he was one of those who came farther than the usual travellers by his pale skin and hair like the sun. He smiled at her. She stiffened, remembering how foreigners like these were said to have very little respect for women outside their culture.
Her merchant friend must have sensed her discomfort, for he tried to shoo the man away saying he had no time to deal with penniless vagabonds like him.
The man insisted he was a scholar simply wanted to write of his travels and experiences but was robbed by marauders. She snorted and told him that if it were really marauders who stole from him, then he would not be alive to say so.
He had sheepishly admitted to her that a group of children pick pocketed his coins. When the innkeeper learned he had nothing to pay him with, he threw the man out insisting that several of his belongings, including some of his clothes should serve as payment.
After buying what she needed, she saw the man was still there, lingering a distance from the merchant's stall hoping to ask again some form of work once she left.
She came up to him, and asked how he had really come to this place.
He grinned at her, and said he'll tell his story in exchange for some food and a place to sleep in. He knew how her once nomadic people loved hearing tales from outsiders, as if they were out there travelling the world again.
She looked at him with suspicion. What man comes up with a bargain like that to a young unmarried woman living alone if he had no such other motive? So she told him exactly what she thought.
His white face turned into a shade of red. Something she had not seen before. It was when he spoke that she realized he was embarrassed, as his speech was flustered and halting.
Her suspicion of him grew less at this. She told him that in exchange for his story, she would cook him dinner but that he would sleep outside her house with a mat.
He nodded to her, saying it was an acceptable condition compared to sleeping out in the streets like he had done so for a week.
He told her he was the son of a duke (whatever that was) back in his country. His older brother inherited most of his family's wealth and title when his father died. To her surprise, he was only a young man of seventeen. He told his brother he had wanted to see the world and all its wonders. His brother allowed it, "to get rid of a nuisance of a brother," he said laughingly.
He planned to set out with only himself and a guide that he would hire. It was all a grand adventure to him. He had first set out south-eastward, to see the islands and the blue-green sea. Then he planned to travel up north to the east empire before he had been robbed.
Her impression of him was that of an overeager child who had been denied nothing all his life. He had studied all the languages he needed to communicate, learned all that he thought necessary to protect himself, yet he was strangely innocent.
He had wanted to know everything there was under the sun, but never learned to understand or to appreciate it.
He told her he was looking for some way to gain some money to continue on his journey. She asked him if he would not send for a messenger to tell his brother of his fortune or at least use the money to return home.
He did not want to return like a shameful child who grew tired of some game he did not succeed in. His unfortunate experience had taught him there was more to the world than people who are simply good and evil.
She asked him what made him say so.
He answered that the children who stole from him were beggars he saw previously being shunned by the people who passed by them. He himself was one of the said people who turned away from the dirty child who came up to him asking for something to eat. He tried his best to ignore their calls and walk away unmindful that another child had bumped into him by "accident". It was ironic that the same fate of these beggars would befall him as well, had he not shown a little compassion for them.
She said he was too focused on his journey to learn all about the world; that he did not see that the world was all about the people, not the places.
The next day, she asked her merchant friend to give him a job in his caravan as an all around helper and a body guard. Despite his naiveté, he had some skill with a sword. She warned him, before they set off that people were not keen as to fight fairly in real battles.
When her friend returned the next month, he told her that another trader hired him as an interpreter and bodyguard. He would be more useful to a wealthier merchant, rather than someone of moderate wealth than him.
The next time she saw him was four years later. He had definitely grown. Not just physically, but wiser.
It had been time for their festival for the sun god. And by tradition, she and the other girls would dance out to the square when the sun was at its highest.
He complimented her later that afternoon as they walked back to her home. She said it was what she loved ever since she was a young girl. She knew he was wondering why she lived alone but never had the courage to ask.
Her mother had been a dancer as well, loved by her father who was a potter. It was when she was nine that they were taken from her in the night by marauders on their way to visit an aunt.
She had become an orphan with no dowry yet prepared for her. Her life had become a nothing more than a bleak little existence whose only purpose was to survive. Each day had faded into the same routine to live with the meagre amount that they had been able to save.
The aunt that they had visited was a widow herself. She had come to her niece even with the knowledge that her sister and husband had perished this way.
She taught her niece the art of weaving out beauty. That even the plainest colours could be melded together to form something exquisite. That was like what life was, she had said, that if you see things apart, they are all mundane and hardy look significant but together, you form what people see as life in all its aspects.
She grew to love the sun again. She knew no day was like the one before. Even with its all too familiar cycle, things kept changing. Things never stayed the same. In that was a promise that life would never stay bleak.
Her aunt stayed with her until she died two years before she met the young man. When her parents died, it had been filled with anger at the injustice of it all. Grief mingled with pain. Her aunt's death had a sense of peace and fulfilment that reassured her that the sun would still rise again tomorrow.
After her tale, he was silent. Both of them dwelled on reflection on what their young lives had been.
It was a while later when she asked him where he would be staying for the night. He told her of the innkeeper's look of shock as he announced he will be staying there again, and this time with money from his employer.
She let him stay as a guest at the dinner feast with her friends on their celebration. He could tell them all of his adventures then.
He worked for the merchant as an interpreter to the men he was dealing with. He had gone to palaces where the court would be filled with danger and intrigue. He recounted the time an old queen propositioned him as a lover only to tell her he was interested in men to keep her advances away and his head intact.
When he was not needed by his employer, he took time to know the people and their culture. Though he had been educated back in his homeland, it was merely from the recollections of travellers who were only keen in mingling with the foreign upper class.
He told them stories of magic. That of a man who could blend with the shadows as if he were invisible; a witch who had tried to poison her stepdaughter with an apple (he later explained it as a fruit).
He told her of how they had been once captured by pirates. Along with some men, they devised a plan to make the captain think that they were ill with a plague. With that, they took command of the ship and its bounty.
She noted how despite all his feats, he was never one to show himself with all the glory. Though he did share much of his daring exploits, he gave the people recognition and gratitude for their help.
Later that night, he gave her a bound book, written in her language of all that he had come across. He had another one, he said, written in his own tongue. It was not fully complete. He doubted it would ever be truly completed as things never stayed constant to be as how he encountered.
He would send a copy to his brother, for his country to learn from. Then he would continue again with his travels.
She promised him that he would always be welcome back here.
He smiled at that and told her he'd be back again to tell her more of the things he came across.
She loved him for he was like the sun. He would be gone for some time, yet return with hopes and dreams to come.