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She kneeled quietly, meditating in the warm desert air. Hot wind pulled at her long unbound hair as she sat praying to Allah. The long moments of her prayer passed slowly and she reveled in the quiet, the stillness. An overwhelming sense of peace consumed her as the morning held her.
From behind her she heard footsteps. They were stealthy and tentative, apparently attempting not to disturb her. She smiled to herself as the familiar tread drew nearer. She turned, disturbed from prayer, to face her brother. False anger splayed across her face. The face which mirrored her own expressed a distinctly opposite expression, obviously intended to make her laugh.
A glance at the humorous expression on his face quickly changed her false anger to giggles. He was a handsome, man, her twin. The same height as she, he wore his hair short, cut close to his head, a great contrast to her long mane of ebony locks. They had the same tanned skin and similar features. The only difference apart from their gender was their hair, for they were as similar in personality as in looks.
As she looked at him his features contorted. His healthy, fit body thinned, void of muscle, bones visible beneath taught skin. His handsome face twisted, becoming pale and gaunt. A thin hand, resembling a dried piece of desert grass reached toward her. "Sister…" The raspy voice hurt her ears.
"NO!"
Daqe woke with a start on the leafy ground of her new home in Sherwood Forest. It was night still, the darkness enveloping the small camp in which she was nestled.
"Daqe, is everything all right?" Will's concerned voice was right next to her, whispering in her ear.
"All is well", her voice was quiet and unconvincing, but Will didn't question her again. When his breathing slowed and became a rhythmic pattern Daqe breathed deeply the night air. She stood slowly, taking great care not to awaken the sleeping forms around her, and walked a few yards away from the camp.
She sat to contemplate her nightmare; she believed dreams were messages from Allah which were meant to be understood. As much as it disturbed her, the images of her dream she new well. Her twin, the real Daqe was once as he had first appeared to in the dream, young and handsome. The second rendering she knew as well, it was her brother when he returned home from the war with the English.
Daqe had left home on their sixteenth birthday to join their country men in the fight for their homeland. He had been wounded in battle. Then as he began to heal, took ill with one of the numerous diseases brought to the Holy Land by the Crusaders. It was the disease which brought him home to her.
The homecoming had not been what she imagined it would be. Her brother, her twin, who she loved dearly returned home very ill. Two days after his return he passed to the other world, with her at his bedside. Whatever disease had befallen him soon infected the entire family; their mother, father, younger sister and brother. She had been the only to survive.
Daqe sighed deeply, as she recalled her brothers death. She ran her hand over her short fuzzy hair. Had her brother stood beside her now they would be completely indistinguishable. She smiled as she thought of what her brother would say of her hair. He would make light of it and assure her that it would grow back, and be just as beautiful as it once was.
But he would be wrong. Daqe's smile hardened into a grim expression. She had made a vow at her brother's bedside, as he lay dying, to live as a man, to live the full life he, her beloved brother, lost. "I shall be Daqe, the man, until my death", she reminded herself.
Only the wind heard her words, and it whispered a soft, mournful reply. Daqe strained to understand, as the world began to grow hazy around her. She drifted off to asleep, lulled by the softly swaying trees of Sherwood.