We Djinns are enraptured by love. For it fuels the arts like no other thing can. Poetry, Music, Dance, Literature, Painting and Etching, Fashion, even the ones thought to be so less commonly: Cuisine, Horticulture, Architecture, and so on----all are better when the muse is love.

Immortality affords much, one of the chiefest privileges it affords is no need to rush, there is always time and so one never needs to feel addled by the pressures of what one is currently preoccupied with. And with that comes how to spend this endless ocean of time and it is a well shared sentiment of us that though many think the best entertainments for viewing are the arena, the rise and fall of nations, the card table, the wildlife in season, a orchestral procession, et cetera et cetera----it rarely compares to the odyssey between young lovers, and it so happens it is a ready dish as every day new people fall for each other.

But, oh my my my, some loves are a cut above. They summon words of tempest and gale, sultry and torrid, heights and depths, blood and fire, laughter before bed, kicks that leads to a kiss, flour tomatoes dresses games and so much more. I was so lucky recently to happen upon so much as this, and I have little doubt I will be writing a volume or two on this very romance.

This romance begins with neither pursuing the other, much less aware of the other. I frequent the library of Khepresh quite often--invisible of course--for what the humans here lack they do have an impressive library with more than a few volumes to be sure that we do not have in Al'qasr. And so more than once I've caused a librarian to give a rather puzzled double-take at a book that was just floating mid-air with the pages open.

In the summer one day I was hovering about as usual and in walked a young woman, couldn't have been older than 20, and she went from shelf to shelf unsure of what she fancied and then suddenly after one glance she ripped a book so fast the friction could have started a fire and then off she went in her dress and all, to a table dead center in the library and began reading. I thought nothing of it, only that I had never seen her before. Now not an hour later the Prince first born entered, and he, yes I've seen many time before, not without eavesdropping as well. A born leader, a pride for any father. Most patrons deferred him a certain reverence as he went right to a certain shelf, knew the exact book he wanted, and then walked over to a corner. The exception however was this girl, I noticed, but no other soul did. Like I said a privilege of being able to live in the moment because there is no shortage of them. Instantly, though these two didn't know----I knew. And I put my book right down because a far better one had entered and yet to be written.

Nothing really happened that day except when the girl got up to leave, first depositing her book, she passed into the line of the sight of the Prince, and somehow the Prince was called to look up and there she was walking by and then away and the Prince did not falter his gaze back to his reading until she was well gone. That's what I call a chapter.

And so with chapter one over, the first thing I did was go home to Al'qasr, get a quill, many pages of parchment, my best pillow, and a nightcap. I then made my sleeping arrangements in the upper section of the vaulted cave of Khepresh above the library most comfortable and got to bed early to make sure I was well rested for tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and wouldn't you guess the Prince came a bit earlier today. I understand the boy, so duty first, but he spared no time after those duties lay done. He came in and was instantly peering across shelf and desk in that library to see if she was there. Of course she wasn't, but that would soon be remedied. Not too long after the Prince had sat down in the exact same seat as yesterday she appeared. She came in, clearly having a day but not yet tired by any stretch and went to new shelves this time and found a new book, not unlike the manner of yesterday. She found a seat, though different, but relatively in the middle. During the trialing of her new book the Prince looked up, as he was doing now every five minutes, and by thunder there she was. He did little but watch, making sure not to stare. They both read alone and he regularly looking up to see what she was doing while she was absorbed in nothing but the pages. But then, something piqued her, whoever knows what, and she looked up and there he was----reading himself his eyes in the scroll. Her look hung for a little, curiosity undoubtedly snagging her, before she returned to her scroll. It went on like this, back and forth for some time, their gaze's never meeting, the one never being betrayed by the other. The odds were on my side though and finally each looked up at the other at the exact same time, like true fortune or catastrophe. Each rather blanched, both I'm sure thinking the other was already looking and they had become caught. She was slightly embarrassed and I will luckily say for her and more luckily for him she did not know who he was, and so after the initial embarrassment her humor got the better of her and her face did this contortion all at once: she cocked her chin slightly to the side, curled her lips and mouth up to the side as well, and screwed up her eyes so they became a bit bugged all under a flick of her head----I tell you now I laughed! She then diffused it all with a bit of a chuckle of the eyes and mouth before giving a little wave with palm still on the table and went back to her book. The Prince was like a desert gazelle in the moonlight for this whole acrobatic and after she returned to her scroll, he---almost lost, returned to his, and it did not escape me that as soon as he did his eyes flicked for a moment to her though his head remained lowered. Like I foretold, a born entertainment that could rival any book.

Not before the end of the day did the Prince, when she looked up at him again, catch her gaze and made a kind of peace offering with a nod via his whole frame in chair, acknowledging his role in the awkward exchange prior and doing so with his own humble but endearing smile. She returned something similar in effect, and now they were on good and agreed terms. A few more exchanges before he had to go: him walking past her, glancing at her, while she remained comically, self-awaredly riveted to her papyrus as she yet then was still nervous for any eye contact so close----again she said everything she felt with those goofed eyes and scrunched lips to me. (Djinns have exceptional eyesight if you didn't know. We're like hawks, you have to be, so commonly were thousands of feet above what we're looking at.)

And that was that. They would return over the course of many days and continue just like that, each one glancing at the other, sometimes sharing an exchange, each with a new twist. Until one day she never showed, it had been hours and hours past their normal rendezvous but she wasn't there and a mounting feeling came over the Prince. For as time went on he shed more and more that boyishness that near no one ever witnesses in him, donning instead the mantle of serious action. He clearly was worried that something happened to this girl and I have no idea what was in his mind but near the end of late evening he suddenly got up, leaving his book on the table and started marching towards the exit with some clear plan of action framed in his mind. He walked past the last shelf, next the water, up the stairs, under the arch and bam right into her. They were just on the landing now that connects the library, the temple, and the primary atrium and she... and you'll learn this in time, but she was very good at always knowing what was on his mind as they went on, he good at it when the matter was serious bad at it when it wasn't... she instinctively knew what he was about judging by his exasperation and she let out with arms akimbo looking him up and down---

'what was the plan then? raise the alarm?',

accompanied by a good scoff laugh and inviting happy-to-see-you-eyes. The fleece hit him good and he just went from rigid to easy and let out a sigh of laughter.

This is how Addaya and first Prince Setnakht met.

Their love seemed as invincible as ever, and so themselves inseparable. What before was one or two trysts at night a week had now approached four or five a week. They had been everywhere, their loved leaving footprints all throughout  Khepresh: The balconies, the alcoves, the baths, from the kitchens to the throne they had met. By concealment of night and masks during the day they had lived hidden, in secret, and in rapture for almost a year now.

Much had happened over that year, they were growing more bold in the face of risk but equally more clever and skilled with eluding it. The most important development was as they had experienced all that this place could offer, in all meanings of it, they were becoming serious about planning to leave Khepresh behind, and with it all of Ankrahmun.

Nakh had a plan which would need his brother's consent but he was confident his brother would help and not fail him. With this plan Nakh in no way would abandon the Kingdom but leave it in excellent hands. Addaya was resplendent at it all, her life had been waiting for something and she finally knew what that was: the right one to spend it with. Beyond that it didn't matter what it was as long as each day was moving on to the next.

They would travel together beyond the border of the greater Kha'labal, and wherever from there, making a life with each other. Nakh would take nothing the Kingdom had given him except his wits and grit as a point of honor offering his conscience a clean break. Addaya was planning to leave everything she couldn't carry on her back to Nadira.

They were waiting for late Summer as it was the safest time to travel through the desert.

This night they met each other at the last place they had yet been together: the map room. In the west of Khepresh it sits. Pharaoh, Neybar II, from many centuries ago ordered a map room to be created so that it may be used for war, colonization, trade routes, tracking the movements of tribes and herds, as well as teaching students, a reference for scholars, and a place to hold matters on all such things. Functionally it has as a keystone the map of the known world inscribed on the ground with the tiling being used to denote it. During Thutmose IV's reign it was also used as a game board.

The basins of all the fires were lit and so though the room was dark they could each see all the markings on the mapped floor. Nakh and Addaya had been going over the route they would be taking once eloping by studying various charts and maps in the library until they both knew it by heart, accounting for all possible problems that they could encounter in each step of the journey. The rest of the night was spent imagining stories about all the places they would travel to and explore, the adventures they would share and how they would raise their children on the road... disbelief in how the Mask would no more be a reality but only an episode in their lives. They were both bold and rash, yet undaunted by whatever hardships lay ahead because they knew the other would support them to endure it. Forgoing a life trapped in a palace they wished instead to be restart free and penniless.

All this was wonderful, a real life fairytale of their own making. I was truly happy for them and became glad each time when I imagined recounting it to my fellow kind, of which I knew it would be a touchstone story for centuries. Perhaps it would be after time a pivotal moral for all of Ankrahmun's people, 'Nakh and Addaya'.

As the night was drawing down they were making ready to part like all their nights, and so they began to leave and I as well, but what's this.... 

.. The dread that gripped me then was paralyzing. I saw across the way south of the Map Room and the river that parts the Map Room from the Barracks some little figure at the Barrack's lookout precipice. Someone was moving from the telescope, seemingly tracking it on the two lovers. It was too dark and too far for the two mortals to ever be able to see such a distance but my eyes only wished they couldn't. For I recognized this boy, yes boy. It was the wanting suitor for Addaya, a perfectly fine yet entirely normal young man. I have seen many a time when Addaya is at work or rest him looking at her. He has made more than a few overture's trying to win her company when there are social gatherings between the youth, though politely, she let's him down gently for they could not be two more different souls. The poor man is bewildered by the rejection, what is, is so wrong with him and what does he need to do right----the root of self-infliction: lack of experience.

....

His pain will have besotted his judgement, his feelings envenoming his actions, unrequitedness to our affections can turn us all rabid dogs and then regretful after biting.

...

I have no idea how long he's been aware of their secret relation, but there can be no doubt if he was here tonight even for a moment before they left he will know. They are in great danger, if he tells anyone no mask will save them-- it is as likely he will be killed as her. I must get leave from the council to intervene, I will hurry now to Al'qasr before it's too late. I fear the end of this night will swallow them and all they have if they're not warned before the next.