Book 1 - Sand
Part 1
This thread is intended to be paired with Voyage of the Homebound (1.1)
Wednesday, February 1st, 2023
Rahnam, Daabab 13th, 412
As dusk rapidly approached Mukarras, the amber gleam of sunset filtered through the window of a 23rd floor penthouse suite, bringing with it a kind of comfortable silence, a cool and gentle breeze, and a faint scent of floral perfume. It was almost springtime in Aldaar, and Azniv felt confident that WEGEC would make their counterattack during Alnahda, during the festivities on the 20th of March. For that reason, she had slowly been issuing warnings to travel agencies, and cautioning foreign dignitaries. There would be future celebrations, but she wanted minimum collateral damage.
For what seemed like the millionth time tonight, Azniv looked at what Yufraan had left her - carte blanche when it came to expanding and supplying Aldaar’s military. A signature, essentially from god, saying that Azniv Haviiz had the complete - and only - authority to expand the ADF however she wanted. She wondered where Yufraan and Omar were; she could find out, easily, but she preferred not to know. There were some truths better left unspoken. Sighing, she stood up and went to her window. The city was beautiful tonight.
The fate of all that - the entire city, and many more out in the desert - was in her hands. She had never wanted this. She wasn’t even technically from Aldaar; by birth, she was Packilvanian. Not that where you were from mattered in Aldaar, anyways, and the country had no official policies for borders or immigration, nor did it have any requirements for citizenship besides residency. And she had certainly lived here long enough; Azniv had only been 8 when her parents sent her to live with her extended family in the city of Nafaq, an oasis town surrounded by nothing but desert for miles. Even then, she had known that Golden Oil had too much power - they controlled literally every method of transport into the town, which was renowned for its vast orchards. It had been difficult to find modern medication, but Nafaq had been here for millenia and the people knew how to use herbs to their advantage - in order to help her, Azniv had had daily doses of a remedy made from green tea, saw palmetto leaves, licorice, spearmint, and peony flowers. But most important was the Tanshiit cactus, a cactus native to the Anabat that very few people knew of outside of Nafaq, despite its almost mythical abilities to enhance the power of herbal remedies. But Azniv was getting distracted, and mentally expositing herbalism was not what she needed to focus on. Hopefully, a shower would help her focus.
As Azniv was showering, though, she couldn’t help but mainly focus on her body. After 22 years, Azniv finally really loved how she looked and felt, and how other people saw her. She had put so much work into getting her body to be… well, her body. Something that jived with how she saw herself. Going from her community’s herbal remedies, to smuggled modern medicine, to surgeries in some of the best facilities in the world. She had come so far in 22 years; from local nobody to national hero and multimillionaire, from horrifyingly ugly (she smiled at this injoke with herself, she had actually been quite handsome) to beautiful, or at the very least quite cute. She did a little pose to herself, and laughed.
And there was still that carte blanche, waiting for Azniv. Don’t worry, reader, she’s getting there. Be patient with her.
She quickly dried off and went back to her desk, once again contemplating the enormity of the weight that had been placed on her shoulders. But then she remembered her family and community, who had taken her in and supported her no matter what. And she thought of the thousands of little girls who were just like she had been, whose lives would be destroyed if they were unable to preserve Aldaari independence. And suddenly, Azniv realized that she wasn’t protecting Aldaar. In fact, Aldaar wasn’t even a concrete thing that could be protected. It was a people, a way of life, a set of ideals - and more than that, it was a thousand peoples, millions of ways of living, and throughout the desert, tens of millions of ideals. It was that Aldaar that Azniv needed to defend; the one that had accepted her and lifted her up, even when there was an oppressive force pushing down against them. And now, that same oppressive force wanted to come back?
Hell to the no.
Maybe Azniv hadn’t wanted this responsibility, but she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to do her best. And her best was better than almost anyone’s. So she sat down, and began drafting the proposals for Aldaar’s last stand.