Author's Preface
Faris woke with a lightness that had lived in his chest for weeks now and hadn't once let go.
He was an uncle. He turned the word over most mornings like a coin in his pocket, still slightly amazed by the weight of it — his brother's daughter, small and furious-lunged, already gripping fingers with a strength that made the whole household laugh. And beyond that, closer to him, quieter, there was Latifa. She no longer flinched when he came near. She let him carry her water jars, let him sit a respectful distance away while she worked, let her guard down in small increments he'd learned to treasure without ever remarking on.
He walked toward her tent in the cool of the morning with a bundle of dried lavender under one arm — she'd mentioned liking the smell once, in passing, and he hadn't forgotten — and slowed as he noticed the wind had been busy overnight. A fine coat of dust had settled along the base of her tent walls, caught in the folds where the heavy outer fabric met the ground.
He stopped a respectful distance from the flap, as he always did, and called out.
"Latifa! It's Faris." His voice carried the particular warmth it only had for her these days. "I came to help — looks like your tent could use a good dusting in a few places. May I?"
Inside, Latifa went very still.
She'd woken late, by her own old standards — the sun already well up, the settlement's morning sounds drifting past her tent walls, unhurried. She'd made tea without checking a clock, sat on the low cushions with her hair still loose from sleep, and torn a piece of warm bread to drag through butter, entirely unbothered by the crumbs scattering across her lap.
Then his voice, right outside, and every old reflex she thought she'd buried fired at once.
"Don't come in!" The words flew out before she'd thought them through, sharper than she meant. "Don't — don't enter!"
There was a beat of silence, and then Faris's voice, immediate and gentle, without a trace of offense in it. "Hey — it's all right. I'm not coming in."
She sat frozen, bread halfway to her mouth, listening to him settle the matter without her having to explain a single thing.
"You know what you're doing," he went on, easy, unbothered. "I only wanted to see how your morning was going. If you need anything — anything at all — tell the guards outside, and I'll come straight away." A short pause, and she could hear the smile in it even through canvas. "Don't worry about it. I'm going now."
She heard his footsteps recede across the sand, unhurried, no sting of hurt feelings trailing behind them.
Don't worry about it.
Latifa sat very still with the bread going soft and forgotten between her fingers, and the phrase echoed like a coin dropped in an empty jar.
She had built her entire life, once, around worry. Worry had been the water she swam in — whether her hair sat right before a morning meeting, whether her blouse had wrinkled on the drive over, whether her parents would approve of a decision before she'd even finished making it, whether anyone had noticed the two minutes she'd been late. She had polished her shoes until they squeaked and ironed creases into clothes no one else would ever look closely enough to judge. She had performed competence and composure so consistently that she'd stopped being able to tell where the performance ended and she began.
And a man had just stood outside her tent — a local prince — heard a rather sharp refusal from her, and simply walked away, leaving her with nothing but don't worry about it.
Accustomed to the men in her family always demanding obedience or at least polite excuses, she hadn't expected such a reaction. He hadn't lost his temper, raised his voice, or demanded that she immediately make herself presentable. Without another word, he had simply respected her boundaries.
She looked down at herself. The linen dress she'd slept in, soft with wrinkles, the fine embroidery at the cuff slightly askew where she'd tugged the sleeve in her sleep. Her hair, uncombed, falling loose over one shoulder. No paint on her face, nothing hiding the shadows under her eyes from a poor night. By the entrance, her boots sat dusted grey from yesterday's walk, and nobody here had said a word about it — the sand belonged to everyone, and no one thought less of a person for wearing a little of it home.
Back on Earth, this exact image — dust on her boots, crumbs on her lap, her hair a wreck — would have sent her into a spiral of quiet shame before she'd even had her tea. Here, a man who held power in this land had simply offered to beat the dust out of her rugs and gone away cheerfully when she wasn't ready, as if her being unready were the most natural thing in the world and not a failure on her part at all.
She thought about the robes she'd been given when she first arrived, how heavy and strange they'd felt at first, how certain she'd been they would trip her at every turn. She'd learned differently within a week. The loose weight of the fabric caught the wind instead of fighting it, breathed with her in the heat instead of clinging, gave her room to move that her old fitted clothes never had. No one here had asked her to cover her hair, either — she'd noticed that quietly, gratefully, in her first days, the small mercy of it never once turned into a rule.
She picked the bread back up and finished it slowly, no longer minding the crumbs.
For the first time in longer than she could remember, nobody expected her to be anything other than exactly what she was this morning — tired, soft-edged, unbrushed, and entirely unashamed of it. She didn't have to earn her breakfast by looking a certain way while she ate it. She didn't have to prove, through the state of her boots or the crease of her dress, that she deserved to be cared for.
Outside, faintly, she could still hear him — a low word to one of the guards, a laugh at something, his footsteps moving off toward the well. He would come back later, she knew, with some small thing he thought she might like, and he would ask before he offered it, and he would leave without complaint if she wasn't ready.
She sat with her tea going lukewarm in her hands and let herself, for once, simply not worry.
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