Djinni had once known the royalty of Beqanna; she was no less educated than any young princess. She knows her family history – the history of the Deserts and the Chamber – and knows that the older brother her mother spoke of so fondly was the son who inherited the Chamber after her grandmother and grandfather…left. It should have been Aseret; she was the eldest daughter of both the king and the queen, but Aseret had forsaken her family and her crown. She’d picked up another crown on the way of course, but the abandonment of the Chamber had always been something that Djinni and her siblings could never get Aseret to speak of.
If she said her mother’s name would Straia even recognize it? Would saying it be a betrayal of her mother, even on accident?
No, Djinni decides, it would not. It is time that Aseret’s part of the family return (even if only for a while). “My mother was Aseret, and her mother was Queen Starlace.” Starlace had so many children, nearly a dozen. Most of them disappeared (though two still wander Beqanna – Set and Tiphon - Aseret’s favorite brother and her most loathed). Aseret had been absorbed into the Desert while Set remained, siring children of his own including a son who ruled the kingdom who had a daughter, who herself had a daughter that stands in front of Aseret and offers to show her the kingdom
They are what – cousins twice removed, she and Straia? It’s a blood tie, but in the pool of family that is Beqanna, their relationship is barely anything at all.
“My name is Djinni. I grew up in the Desert, but I always wanted trees.” More trivial facts, but she has no reason to hide the past anymore. Though she is unaware of the current political climate of Beqanna, she knows the scent of the sandy kingdom had faded away years ago – she is no spy.
Straia takes her into the kingdom and Djinni looks about as she walks, keeping pace with the tobiano mare who wears the same white markings as Djinni. Hers are from her father, of course – Mother had not inherited her dam’s tobiano coloring (or her sire’s black). The thumping beneath her feet is, for a brief moment, worrisome. Is the black and white stallion returning to shake the earth? No, she decides, Straia doesn’t seem worried, so it must be something normal.
The place is beautiful.
The mist and the trees and the stark granite cliffs are the very opposite of the sand and sun and red limestone she grew up with. She does not know why Aseret had left the Chamber, and cannot imagine why she did not return. Love has always seemed such a flimsy reason.
“What do you do in the kingdom?” She asks as they walk, taking a moment to glance over at the bay mare rather than the scenery.