Blossom
A desert. Bleak, desolate. The only life around for a thousand miles had been dead for years. This was not a place of survival; this was a land of pain. There he walked, trapped, trotting toward death. This is all he knew; a land with no comfort, no escape. He marched on, deeper and deeper into the burning sand. It blew against him; the hot roughness peeled the skin off his face. He spotted something in the distance, something bright and warm. He dragged his weary, half-dead self toward it.
In the middle of this sparse, barren landscape, sitting amongst the dunes and the shifting earth, he found a cage. He examined it closely.
Why is it here?
How did it get here?
The cage felt heavy, cold. He noticed something beyond the bars. Inside lay a flower. A wilted flower, but a flower nonetheless. This flower appeared to have once been magnificent, beautiful. It seemed to have experienced trauma, its very essence stripped away, petal by petal. He found this flower irresistible.
A new wind blew against his skin. Not the typical hot, sand-filled disaster of a wind that he’s accustomed to. This one was delicate, peaceful. It gently kissed his skin and mended his soul.
Curiosity got the better of him. He opened the cage to retrieve the flower. He must have a closer look. Touching it, embracing its essence, the cage disintegrated. The dust that once comprised the bars washed over the landscape.
Where sand once blew, grass now grew. Where death once reigned, life flourished. The desert turned into a meadow; the dunes into soft, rolling hills; the skeletons of those long dead into forest wildlife at play. A river now brought promise where only chaos once flowed. Now surrounded by life, by beauty; in his hand, the flower blossomed into what it was always meant to be.
Heart pounded.
Sweat poured.
Santo slowly opened his eyes, his dream lingered like a forgotten song. He sat up, rubbing his head. It was rare when he dreamed, at least one he could remember. This one, he didn’t think he’d ever forget. He should still be resting; he had just led a caravan of tin from Kabul not two days ago; yet he couldn’t stay inside another second. He quickly dressed and exited his house. Once outside, he realized he didn’t have many coins on him. He returned inside and grabbed an additional purse.
He never carried that much money on him when he was alone, that was just begging to get robbed. He did have a habit of escaping those kinds of situations unharmed, however; those who attempted to assault him rarely walked away whole, if at all. Still, it’s better to avoid such conflict. There was an urge though, he needed money.
Wandering around Bukhara, almost dead to the world, no destination in mind, still floating on a dream. He was a shell of his usual hollow self, being pulled by something mysterious, something magical. At that moment, his legs were not his own. The wind chilled him to the bone, the air soaked in harshness; everything smelled of despair and copper.
Santo loathed this town. They called it “Noble Bukhara,” the copper city, the city of merchants. At its surface, Bukhara was filled with beautiful blue-glazed domes, mosques and madrassas; more libraries than could be counted. Underneath: shadowy arcades, slave markets, and public squares advancing not only culture but also cruelty. A city of beauty and brutality, mosaics and minarets; but also, iron shackles and whispered deals.
Such wicked men, pure evil hiding behind Allah, Yahweh, and false pretenses. Some of the greatest minds of Islam, Christianity, and even Zoroaster himself haunted this town, accumulating all the knowledge of “civilized society.” Yet somehow these men had not learned to be decent human beings. So far away from the enlightened centers of the world, terrible acts were carried out simply because they could be, and because a lot of money was at stake. That was the true god of men: gold and silver. He had seen men stab their fathers and bury their mothers for these “gods.” He rejected all of it.
Before he knew it, Santo found himself in the slave market. A beautiful, crumbling madrasa loomed nearby, a place of learning beside a place of suffering. How did I get here? he wondered.
This was the last place he would ever go, yet some unseen force had pulled him there. Men yelled and screamed, dooming the lives of countless. Santo would just as soon kill them all than dare acknowledge even one of them.
The pull, the magical tether that had brought him here, stopped tugging. Now he just stood there, bewildered, confused. His vision blurred; the world dimmed around him. Then, through the haze, he saw what was pulling him: a woman.
Scarred, bruised, beaten. Everything about her screamed loser, trouble, run. This group of slavers didn’t take very good care of their property, he thought. He wasn’t sure why that pissed him off. They didn’t deserve to own something like that. He didn’t know her, he didn’t plan to know her, but he couldn’t look away.
Something about the way she stared through the crowd; unmoving, unbending, like a tree still standing in a burnt-out forest. There was something about her stillness, not resignation but containment. He’d seen hundreds of slaves in markets like this. Most cried, begged, flinched at every sound. She didn’t. She didn’t even blink.
She looked half-dead, which meant she’d survived things most people couldn’t. The slavers had broken her down to nothing; and still, something remained. He hated that he noticed, he hated how it pulled at him. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, though he supposed she was; and it wasn’t her strength, though he saw that too. It was just her… presence. She was still there when she had so many reasons to give up.
She leaned against the post like someone who had already taken the worst the world could throw and was ready for more. There was attitude in it, defiance, but also something else, safety, or at least the memory of what safety might have felt like. He couldn’t name why, but in that moment, he felt as though she might shield him as much as he could shield her.
A strange relief washed over him, like finally exhaling after holding his breath; or a sharp thorn stuck deep in his foot being pulled free. There was a gnawing feeling that he’d met her before.
Had they traveled caravans together? No, more recent than that. She looks like… a flower. That’s it! I dreamt about a flower last night. A caged flower. Is she the caged flower? Am I supposed to release her?
