Desert flowers and angel witches.

[--GlamRock--]

Phiraz, 740 BC.

She could not remember that day, the day she was born. The sudden snap in the wheel of time. "Black eyes, black eyes", she would have heard, by muffled voices and screams, mingled with her own, that breath of life. We start dying the day we are born. A flower being born and plucked, and given away, as a gift, as a discarded beauty, as act of unwise compassion.

The Amber Wastes, 754 BC.

The Angel's wrath was on their land, they could just move and move, from source to other source. The shadows hiding more dangers than the burning sun, and the night offering the Angel's wrath. She helped with everything they asked, she learned respect, she learned not to fear. She loathed the Angel with all her heart, the divine injustice on her friends, her people, her family. She made tea. She was named Jasmine. And she hunted. And she learned. The hope and joy of life provided by a single drop of water, a tear of joy of real angels, not the fake ones like him. Diamabel. A name which was seldom spoken, not to attract his attention. Or his wrath. Winds of hope sweeped away by the dusty and sandy grains of the envious breath of the white-robed angels.

Village of Muhar, 763 BC.

All the slaves around, even less water than Pharazia, and an unknown destiny. Young, beautiful and servile. Camels and dates were asked for her and always more and more. She seemed precious. She was a wingless bird. A fallen real angel. Despair and dismay. Run, Jasmine, as you used to, she said to herself, run, just run. And she was unable to move. And for the first time she faltered, and prayed. The Mists replied.

Vallaki, 766 BC.

One year. Run Jasmine, run. She ran. A world of water yet with fake angels all around, all in white, even disguised as animals. She was scared, but recollecting her nomad pride. And strange beings, like the elves or the hins, real angels, she faltered again. She started making tea again with the new leaves she found. And working hard. Running and running, challenging the cold in her mink furs. Until that day in which she met his wrath. And she gave herself away. And she realised Diamabel had been watching her.

[--GlamRock--]

The Amber Wastes, 754 BC.

Akir clothes bartered in the caravan, with those rich garnments she really loved, yet, her black-tar eyes in shaming jealousy could not help staring. The few roots and the little flowers, the unweeded garden of sand, she practiced with hands and heart. And when she saw them leaving for the vaporously apparent infinite horizon, she knew she had to leave the pester and embrace the bow. As the dunes, any single grain of sand had to shift position as soon as the others around did. Winds of hope were always expected. The wrath was just a shadow.

Vallaki, 766, BC.

Wrapped in her full mink fur of the shade of the coral she bowed her head, and pointed at something at what she believed was a splending bazaar displayed in the middle of a grassy garden. The veil was moved a bit by a sudden stroke of wind. She shivered. And pointed. The lady in red stated her point, and she had to reply she had not enough to barter. She offered the horns of the white animals minions of the Angel. It was settled, a good bargain for a Pharazian. Homesick. The delicate fabrics was smooth on her dark skin. And she smiled. Homesick, but the nomad's home is the world.

Village of Muhar, 765 BC.

They watched her teeth. And her eyes. She was not allowed the veil. The caravans moved in and out the little village. The sun was hot. They fed her and they gave her some water too. She was a pebble not belonging to that dune. They forced her to try to read. She closed eyes. They hit. She obeyed. She read. She learnt.

Vallaki, 766 BC.

Deliverer of letters and of the Wrath of the Angel. The elves, the angels. Not anything she had seen before. Magic, agile, melodic as the night wind in a lonely valley. She had seen her there in that land full of rain, and probably full of hope and peace. She realised at night things were different. No Angel's wrath to punish the unjust. No divine justice for sin. She could not preach. But she could deliver letters. And Wrath.

[--GlamRock--]

Village of Barovia, 766 BC.

The foul waters were all around, rotting marshes, with those she believed being fake angels. By giving away something she obtained what she had given up before. As the water bringer of life, a simple taint, a blight, could make it the source of the unclean, of the sin, of the corruption. And she delivered wrath, she was finding many people like the bartering merchant: people who had not to be preached at, but showed by example. The place needed to be cleansed. Too early yet.

Village of Muhar, 765 BC.

Her hands moved along the clothes, sewing, weaving, the perfect servant, the ideal slave. They thought to invest on her, healthy and submissive, ready to learn and obey. Dates and camels were never enough, precious stones were asked. And she weaved, as the patient spider, in fearful symmetries, in the desert of the night. Burning bright.

Phiraz, 741 BC.

White-robed men, the law-givers, asking for confessions and delivering the compassion of their Angel. They knew of a black-eyed scoundrel who was hidden. Many confessed, even when they had nothing to confess at all. And many were cleansed and blessed. The law-givers were liberal in their floggings. Punishing one to educate hundred.

Vallaki, 766 BC.

She ran, again, she ran to survive. And she fell. Again, she fell. She could not explain how she had been taken back, if not with the powers of her own faith. The same faith she had at boxing the essences of those rotten beings to use their own power against them. Not everything has a reason why, it just is. She had stopped weaving and she was just delivering. As natural as breathing for her, humble servant. Part of the dune, not the owner of it. She knew she was helping the Angel, his yet unaware servants. A matter of time, from deliverer to weaver once again.

[--GlamRock--]

Village of Barovia, 766 BC.

She said they had to deliver wrath, and Jasmine was easily persuaded by those words. She was not fully persuaded by the several preachers she had met. The green ones and the brown ones. The worshippers of the fog and the worshippers of the sun. They relied a lot on written words they read. To nomads it was forbidden reading or writing, yet she had learnt doing it. And she felt guilty, and she punished herself. She pierced her body and her face, she repeated it did not hurt, yet it did.  She would have felt more rage when helping to deliver wrath. And no need of written words.

The Amber Wastes, 765 BC.

They were afraid of him and kept moving, they seldom spoke of his wrath, but she had heard enough to be scared to the bone about the angel. She never remembered, though, too much of that night. In her worse nightmares it was just the night in which the sky cried and drops of fire, as rain, fell on her, on her friends, on the nomads. They fled, shattered, sparse, confused, and she got lost. A flower without a vase.

Perfidus, 766 BC.

She did not know those people but she felt bold enough to accept their challenge. They spoke of beings which sounded as the fake angels she had promised to fight. Shattered, sparse, confused, another rain of fire as in her nightmares. And she fled again, in what for her had become home.

Vallaki, 766 BC.

She gave her the ring. A copy of what her mother had left her before abandoning her to the nomads. She had lost the original when the Akiri slavers caught her. She had given her the quintessential sense of being a deliverer, a channel. And she had no compassion for anything. Her wrath, with Jasmine's help, was dreadful. The young girl was enjoying all that bloodshed of the sinful. They needed more allies. But for now the destruction they delivered was enough.

[--GlamRock--]

Village of Muhar, 766 BC.

She listened to the story of the Akir man, a story of his own land, but which wrapped with words all the desert lands. A story of revenge and wrath, told with the melodic and rhyhtmic sense of the Pharazian nights, which she missed. Yet she knew she had to repent fully, she could not go back. She had been a nomad and still was, she had to deliver wrath, to accomplish his wish and his law, to amend her past. Too early. The other nomad, the one the preacher of the angel in green was looking for. She wanted to see him, to breathe again the sharp air of her homeland, to check if she could step again in sin or not. She would have waited.

Blaustein, 766 BC.

She could not understand why the sea could not be untainted off its salt. They tried to explain, she simply could not get why that water was not good to use as normal water. Water, wealth, real richness. Water, water everywhere not any drop to drink. She blamed the evil angels, and their minions, with the Elven Wrath she tried to suppress all of them, but they came back always, in an endless circle. Maybe it was her destiny, her ironic fate, to try to defeat something which could not be defeated. Salty water, as tears.

Phiraz, 747 BC.

She cried newborn tears, her tar-black eyes reddened by them. They took her away, maybe to use her in future against Diamabel. She was a parcel Pharazian did not want to keep, but the nomads would have. A parcel to be delivered, the beginning of her ironic fate. Life to be lived still, somehow predestined and sometimes with the usual twists of fate. As if something was playing with her. Suppressed tears and wrath. Sooner or later they would have come despite her wishes.

Village of Muhar, 765 BC.

Nomads had lost her and Akir had taken her. A good trade. Good teeth, good education, and good attitude. She was just pretending waiting for better times. Revenge must come as the night of the desert, precise, cold, and clean. She was being told tales and stories, some similar to those heard when a child, others totally different. She wished only for more water. Unsalty tears of angels falling from the skies.

[--GlamRock--]

Village of Barovia, 766 BC.

Wrath had vanished and for long time she had just dedicated herself to her teas. She felt as the weaving had stopped. She tried to keep the pace of the land which was hosting her, the wet, slow, and cold pace of the dwellers of the lands full in waters. The angels were not there. No angel to deliver wrath on the sinners. There is a special providence also in the fall of a sparrow. And she met the Watchman of the Angels, and eventually the two worshippers of the sun. Winds of hope and peace were expected, but only by war one could have obtained them.

Itu Skoven, 766 BC.

She was amazed at that land. Such order, and such richness in soil, and in climate, temperate yet rich in clean waters. She accompanied an angel-kin, an elf. And her followers. She was dutiful and as helpful as possible. The crusaders were strong and they extinguished the flames created by the fake evil angels. She was aware that any rich place is at a stake, because the jealousy of the sinners jeopardise what is rightful. Any staight line can be scratched by an envious pencil. Reading. Writing. She was trying not to sin again, yet books and papers were always around. She had to punish herself. Again.

Phiraz, 755 BC.

They would tell her that reading and writing could have put her in trouble with the Lawgivers of Diamabel. They would repeat that almost daily, part of the instruction of being a nomad. Never the same place, never the same routines. The routines were just variations of the same things which something slightly changed. The sun and the stars are not still in the sky, they seem to be, but they are not. And so the nomads. She was born at a wrong time in a wrong place. Special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

Village of Muhar, 765 BC.

She was a special flower born in an arid land. She was a rare flower, who normally springs in a bush. She was faithless. She yearned water. Clean waters. Water in which washing and being cleansed, and fresh, and splashing. She dreamt of a land surrounded by water, with water falling from the skies, and water beneath her feet, water on which she could step upon. Never wish anything if you do not dare to obtain what you want. Her destiny of deliverer was already written. And as a sinner, she kept writing it by herself.

[--GlamRock--]

Phiraz, 746 BC.

The lawgivers had noticed the new wares entering through the gates of Phiraz. It was as if some new land was found, or the inhabitants of the new land had found Pharazia. They tried to have them confess, they tried to imprison them, and to speak to them. Sebua, Har'Akir. Some of them wore ragged clothes, they could hardly speak, they arrived running swiftly through the dunes. New names. Tiyet was a name they heard very often. It was spoken with lips trembling in terror. Terror of the torture, terror of the memory. New lands. New names. The Angel was not happy to share his desert.

Wachter's lands, 767 BC.

She had explored new paths on the west, with new people. Someone was spoiling waters, disease was spreading. And they met one of the fallen angels, the minions of higher powers, meant to deceive and corrupt the innocents. They were victorious but it seemed a temporary win. As a dune which finally forms and is swept away by the twilight wind. And a lesson of history, told with the mouth, but written in the books. Everything was always written there. And everything which was written was destined to corrupt and deceive.

Village of Barovia, 767 BC.

She was abused one time more she could bear. She felt holy in the constant battle against the sinners, but it seemed never enough for them. They asked for more and more, and she was feeling drained, weak and helpless. They were of the kin of the angels and she was clearly not enough for them, she could not be. As a lonely and thin leaf abandoned under the hot sunbeams of the desert, with no water to survive, too much sun to synthetise: and the darkness was as lonely, angelsless and godless, forsaken and forlorn, wrapping her inability to actually see. And she fled towards freedom. A leaf moved by a sudden and restoring wind.

Village of Muhar, 765 BC.

They praised her and they beat her. She had to learn. They could not understand the pride of her land, of her origins, of her commitment to desert duties. She was alone yet among many others, and she did not understand what they said, most of the time, and this led to more abuse. She learnt to nod and to bow her head preventing the pain. But she knew it was temporary. It was too much. She had to flee away, for her freedom.

[--GlamRock--]

Village of Barovia, 767 BC.

After that moment she felt a sudden shiver, and change, but eventually that first blow of wind had gradually slowed, and remained still. Her desire to take order in the forsaken lands was more motivated, more channelled, she felt the web she was weaving around herself was somehow completed. The priests she met in that abandoned house made her ponder to another aspect of what her life had been so far. She was told her kin could not see in the dark. She had learnt, for a strong desire, or for a blessing come from the angels. The vision of truth had never seemed closer to her than now.

Perfidus, 767 BC.

They had clearly stolen all the waters from that land. That desert was nothing similar to Pharazia nor to Har-Akir. It was not dunes moving together flowing, with white noise, to the rhythm and the pace of the desert winds. It was not a place where shadows hide more dangers than the burning sun, nor a place where one can finally find the gentle promise of shelter of a shared oasis. It was a place where the fallen angels had the best on the rest. Yet, with the Watchman, she knew, and proved, that the battle could not be fought. Never start a battle you are not sure to end in your favour, the Wrath would say.

Port a Lucine, 767 BC.

What others called sea kept being a mystery to her. Why people kept thinking it was normal was even more mysterious, as if the lies and the deceptions and the illusions of the fake and fallen angels had won the mind of everyone but hers. She would have tried to understand the place better, in her way, humbly, as the slow pacing of the asp on the sand, moving on a side while going to another. It is not a sin fighting the sinners with their own weapons. It is what she kept doing by boxing the essences of those beings. Yet, she considered the sea as something wrong. The waves moving as the dunes were a hint of a sudden epiphany.

Village of Muhar, 765 BC.

She felt forsaken, no one coming to look for her, a grain of sand without her dune. They painted her face and then her hair, they tried to make her seem better than she was. She did not need that. She wanted to die. She had not deserved the life of a slave, nor the verbal and physical abuse. She wished the winds to blow away the tents of her slavers, and some sudden thunder to punish them, and fire to cleanse them, and salt coming as rain to put an end to their existence. Her will to live was too strong to wish that too much. If only she had known then what she would have known later...

[DM Tarokka]

*bump for future*