Meanwhile, not far away, Gaida lay beside her newborn, watching him sleep — a fragile flicker of hope in the suffocating darkness — even as a cold fear gnawed at her heart, warning of dangers yet to come.
At twenty-three, she was nothing more than a slave. Her features were so indistinct that no one could say where she came from or who she once was.
She looked like everyone, and yet like no one — an oval-shaped face, soft plum lips, a button nose, thin brows, and wide, fawn-like eyes filled with mystery and quiet pain. Thick curls framed her face in shifting shades that changed with the light.
She was painfully thin, malnourished, but still growing taller — a fact that made her stand out. And standing out made her a target.
She was lost in her thoughts and memories — of the group who rescued her from death.
That's where her memories began. It was as if she hadn't lived before that.
A young man had found her in the desert — half-dead, hungry, thirsty, and hallucinating.
He was part of a performance group that traveled through the cities, more refined than a traveling circus, and guided by a powerful female oracle named Mother Afra.
Her thoughts wandered to that moment again — the one where she struggled to remember the young man's name. She could only recall what everyone else called him: Mattar — rain, in Arabic.
She was sure he had introduced himself differently... but what was his real name?
He had held her gently and checked her pulse, brushing dust from her face.
He spoke little, but one of her earliest memories of his voice was when he turned to the woman behind him — the greatest Oracle of their time.
With a soothing, worried tone, Mattar had said:
"She's alive. I can feel a weak pulse."
Gaida, in that moment, had felt like a newborn hearing her first human voice.
The Oracle had answered:
"She's young… yet ancient. We need to take her."
Mattar had lifted her up, and she had passed out in his arms.
She had drifted so far into that memory that she fell asleep beside her own