The sun was high in the sky and blazing in all of its fury. Whatever moisture that hung in the air was the sweat from the people who walked the streets of the desert city. The people walked to and fro; men and women, young and old, all of them going about their business with hardly any other care to distract them from their tasks at hand.
The market place was the center of this hustle and bustle of people. Merchants and traders showing their wares, calling out to potential customers as they shoved their items into unsuspecting people’s faces.
An elder sat in the shade, away from the main thoroughfare, his pale blue eyes gazing unseeing at the people who spared him barely a glance in return. His silver hair hung long and loose past his shoulders and a long staff rested against a bony shoulder. His garments were simple, brown in color, and yet there was something about this man that whispered something more. On his weathered cheeks were tattoos of various signs made from dark blue ink and his unseeing gaze seemed to follow the sounds from everything around him.
At the moment, as he sat on his cushion beneath the shade of a curtained stand, his eyes followed the source of the sounds of small footsteps, bare feet gently padding on the hard packed dirt. There were several of them, weaving their way past the moving crowds of the market place and on toward where the elder sat as still as can be.
The old man smiled at the sound, they were coming once again. These street urchins had taken to visiting him everyday, not to bother him or to pick on him. The only thing they wanted was to hear his tales.
The children comprised of four ranging from ages of twelve to eight. There were two girls and two boys and they gathered around him now, taking their seats on overturned baskets or on the ground. The elder smiled at them, as his blind eyes turned to each of them in turn. “Welcome back young ones. I take it that you wish to hear another tale?”
The children were silent as they waited for the elder, watching him with rapt attention. They never spoke to him but waited for him to begin whatever tale he chose to tell. The elder loved that, they were not like most children he had met who spoke out of turn. They respected him which was more than he can say for most people.
“Let me see…” The old man gently took his staff and placed it upon the ground so that it stood vertically, the top of the wooden staff bore a small blue jewel that began to pulse with light. “I have told you the story of the boy and the genie’s lamp…”
The elder’s unseeing gaze moved back and forth as the staff’s blue jewel emitted a gentle light blue glow. Forms began to take shape from the sand that rested around the staff’s base, the small figure of a man emerged from the sand along with it the form of a tiger’s head, which towered above the small man.
“I have also told you of the king of thieves.” The elder made a gesture and the sandy forms of the man and the tiger head disappeared, only to be replaced by the forms of other men that totaled in forty. “That tale is always a fun one.” He smiled at that as the forty men made of sand began to run and jump. The children all gasped and giggled, enjoying the tricks that the old man could make with the sand.
The elder paused in his tricks as he sensed the attention of other people beginning to gather, their interest peaked at the sound of children’s laughter. His blind gaze traveled over the gathering crowd, his long fingers running gently through the sand around his feet. There was a feeling there, a feeling in the sand he had not felt in a very long time. Ah yes, this was it. He had been waiting for this moment; there was a story he had yet to tell and could finally, at last, tell it. He had not told this one in such a long time.
“My young ones, I have a tale for you.” He picked up a handful of sand and held it up, letting the grains fall into the palm of his other hand. The sand’s flow began to slow and the elder’s blind eyes moved as if he were reading something. “This tale is a legend from long ago, a story that has since been forgotten, where the memories of true love were taken from the very sands of time.”
The sand stopped in its downward flow and then began to spiral upward, moving around the elder’s long fingers and curling about his thin wrist. “Where can I begin this tale? I suppose at the very beginning, but then I would only confuse you, for this tale weaves in and out of others that I have spoken of before.”
The sand spun and twirled around his hands and he slowly eased his fingers apart, the spinning grains of sand beginning to take shape. “It all truly begins on a clear, star filled night.” At this the flowing sand spread apart and a colorful image emerged from the shifting sand that swirled between the elder’s long fingers. “On a night where the moon shines its brightest and a being, the likes of which is hardly seen, laments over the loss of a dear one…”
The Genie and the Djann by FloweroftheBlueStar
Author's Notes:
Hey, I figured I would upload my story here, see if it will get a positive response. I've been having a major writer's block with it so I figured if I do it from the beginning my muse will come back to me. Enjoy!