This came to me when I was reading up on Middle Eastern/ Indian history. I found out that a Fakir was a holy man who did all sorts of religious stuff and traveled around everywhere. They're sort of like gurus and they were mostly of the Hindu or Muslim faiths. Then I was kinda like: "Woo! Princess Tutu Arabian AU!" and this is what happened.

Two on the Sands

Chapter One: The Names that did not Fit.

It was hard for the young man to think himself holy when he felt so unbearably material. First there was his body, a burden nearly uncastable, then the dark cloth around him that felt so real and earthly against his skin. The sword, of course, was the deepest betrayal of his piety. No man like himself should need such a weapon. A man like himself could miraculously survive any attack because that was the Gods' will. Because it was his holiness that saved him from the mere troubles of the normal man's physical pain. Instead his type spent years traveling, growing rough on the road like the callouses of a slave. He was a slave of the gods and he was sure the gods hated him.

Fakir was positive he was awful at his job. Being a faqr meant healing the sick, preforming astonishing feats aided by deities, and spreading a faith. These were all roles that Fakir vowed to perform with the utmost perfection, and while the effort was there, he still failed miserably more often than naught. Maybe there was a recess in his mind, the smallest fissure that held all of his doubts. Fakir feared the gods, he feared that all he was to do was a lie, he feared the endless tunnel of his life that held no visible light, but most of all he feared death.

It was something he cursed himself for often. The Faqrs knew death was an illusion and a passage to the next life to be welcomed. One lived for death and death revealed a next life, a hopefully better life. Fakir saw death as a early ending and a story cut short. It was painful and heart wrenching and it left those behind with empty spaces everywhere. Death was the unfortunate conclusion of a person's life and it was awful.

It didn't help that Fakir was literally named after the holy men. It seemed he had a fate set and he was destined to die an ironic death, one to be welcomed but was instead feared so much.
Hitching up the sword that hung under dark folds and against his hip, Fakir walked. Traveling from place to place, lost in the sands, eternally hungry and sore because it was the job fate and the gods had decided for him.


Duck was not a duck, contrary to what the man selling her naan said. He was leaning in, bushy beard, eyebrows, hair- bushy everything, and grinning with his missing teeth and dark, tiny eyes. She was stepping back, thanking the vendor and practically flinging the money at him. Too many people did this to her and she was an easy sight to gawk at, with her ample red hair and pale skin. Duck's freckles were particularly a point of interest amongst the olive-skinned Persian women who conspired behind their burkas. Their dark eyes would glint with hidden smiles as their gazes fell on Duck, clearly amused at her appearance. It was both unnerving and flattering. Back in Rhine land, Duck received no second glances but here it was almost a welcome surprise. Almost.

The new attention garnered from status of foreigner also fell with the less savory types. Duck may not have been the sharpest quill in the drawer but she wasn't blind to the numerous merchants that attempted to swindle her of money at sight of her odd look, nor was she oblivious to the raking, appraising glances some men gave her. They assumed innocence came bundled with her unfamiliarity in a simple package. But Duck was no fool, maybe an idiot, but not a fool. She stumbled around enough but common sense had yet to fully abandon her. In this foreign land of shifting sands the girl named Duck could at least find comfort in the fact that she was not lost.


It was pathetic and he was lost. The dry sandy towns deep in the desert served as labyrinths that desperately lured in and trapped people for the sake of increasing a dwindling population. Fakir wondered why anyone would wish to live in the dark shadows of the dull houses that cowered on either side of the narrow, dusty streets and came to the conclusion that one only settled here against their own will. No one would actually want move to such a place as Abd-Al- Rashid and those there were kept against their will by unyielding, rough-hewn and ugly walls.

Fakir hoped to leave the town as soon as possible. He prayed to Ganesha for an obstacle free journey, pulling out a small illustration of the elephant- headed god from his meager sack. There was no set destination in his wanderings and he was a fool to wish for no problems along the way.

Climbing a slight cobbled incline, Fakir stepped out of the gloom of the streets and into a bright, bleached pool of sun. The market square of Abd- Al- Rashid was incredibly blinding after the cavernous darkness that he had emerged from and he shielded his eyes briefly against the glare. Everything was remarkably beige. Tents were sand-stained and beaten while trader's robes had a rust tint from weeks on the road and the whole scene seemed submerged in a cloud of dust. It was a surprisingly bustling place for commerce, considering the desolate cluster of structures that was called a town. The market was a place where people from far away traded with people from even farther away- a sort of halfway point across the vast desert.

Blinking, Fakir wove into the crowd, looking uncommittingly for something to do, someone to help. Something to eat would have been nice too. Nothing caught his eye and the market was exasperatingly identical to almost every other one Fakir had ever seen. He shifted on his heels, scanning the outskirts of the square when he stopped.

There. A bright spot of vermillion, so contrasting in the never ending dull around it. Between the edge of the market place and the beginning of an alleyway in a bold strip of diagonal shadow. Fakir headed of in the direction of interest dodging people and tents and carts animals. Amidst the din and eddying throng his whole attention was centered on the vivid point. As Fakir approached the origins of the orange more came into focus. It was hair that belonged to a girl in a mustard-yellow tunic who appeared to be making an attempt to look inconspicuous despite her bright appearance. Upon further inspection Fakir was intrigued by her pale skin and wide blue eyes; he had never seen someone like her before.

The faqr's shadow fell across the girl and she made a scene of only just noticing him by releasing a strangled sound of surprise that sounded almost duck-like.
"Hey."
"Huh? Who? Me?"
She frantically looked left and right as if he had addressed someone else. It was almost comical as her ample hair flopped around, clashing horribly with the yellow cloth. Fakir was not in the mood for stupidity.
"No, I was just talking to that cat over there." she accepted this with a slow bewildered and preoccupied looking nod that made him want to connect his palm with his forehead as soon as possible.
"Idiot. I was talking to you."
"Oh! Uhh... Do you think we could talk later? I'm kinda hiding." Fakir had decided to confront the girl because it looked like she was in trouble and he was never one to withdraw aid- no matter how annoying the aided. He pressed through his obvious frustration and attempted the friendly, wise holy man gambit he was so awful at. "Why were you hiding?"
"Well... You see I was walking down another alley somewhere over there" there was indicated by a vague flap of a hand "And there were these men looking at me all funny- and not funny in a good way- and I told them to mind their own business and they said that my business was their business because that was their part of town or something and I told them that I really had to go but there was this huge guy blocking the way and then they said that they wouldn't mind spending some time with an exotic girl and it was really scary so I punched the big one in the face and ran all the way over here." she looked flustered after releasing everything in one breath and she raised her wide eyes to meet his. Fakir noticed they were surprisingly devoid of fear. Standing there in all her vermillion and mustard yellow glory, she was possibly one of the strangest things he had ever seen and being a faqr was not a job light on 'normal'. One fist was clutched and drawn to her chest, buried in the bright cloth. Fakir tried to imaging, with some amusement, the amount of surprise the man must have felt when she delivered a blow strong enough to bruise her own knuckles like that.
"Did you hit him hard?" she nodded again but with substantially more assuredness and determination.
"Yeah! 'Gave him a real slugger!"

Her enthusiasm was annoying.