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Aladdin looked up at the starry night sky. He stared into the darkness, yet was not lonely. The darkness enveloped him, and it suffocated his body, but it did not hurt. The darkness was not his enemy, and the stars in the darkness were not his foes. He looked up at the black sky and counted the stars. It held so many, after all, and each one seemed to tell a tale to him as he lay watching them. He dreamt of kings and queens, heroes and heroines, and princesses and street rats. He dreamt of adventures, triumphs, failures, and how all the world would be nothing with these things if they also didn't have something else.
Love.
His wedding was only a week away. He smiled as he thought of that- his wedding. He knew that he was ready now, and that after all the waiting and all the stalling he was prepared to take the next step of his life with the woman he loved.
Jasmine.
Her name sent shivers coursing up and down his spine, and he had only thought about it. He loved her the way he didn't even think he was capable of loving- he loved her with his heart, his soul, and his eternity. He understood now what she meant to him and could handle anything so long as she stood besides him.
Searching through the stars, Aladdin caught sight of one that he liked. It was no different from the rest of the stars out in the sky, no different from the ones with their shine contrasting against the black, no different from the ones that were large, or the ones that were small. But he liked it just the same. It held no extravagance against the other stars, yet he liked it. It was just there, and just for that reason he plugged its location into his memory so he could show Jasmine. A diamond in the rough.
He stretched out against the stone steps of his hovel and flopped his head back down on the pillow. Sighing at the night and the hours until he could see his love again, Aladdin closed his eyes and was soon caught in a deep slumber full of dreams about kings and queens, heroes and heroines, princesses and street rats, and stars.
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