Hazy, that is what came to mind when Akino tried to describe the nights. His friend and confidant had thought him mad, said he should be seen by a healer. Even if he were mad, he did not want the nights to go away. For those were the nights she visited him and he truly felt happy.
And in all his sorry life nothing had ever made him feel that way. For his father was a tyrant, that ruled over him with an iron fist. The kind of man to push against the glass doors of a closed shop and cannonballs the walls down to get inside. His mother was distant, unsure of herself and scared of her husband. Inevitably she was left unbound with him as a result.
But Azina, oh Azina. For her father and his father had been great friends. Well once they had been. But ever since years ago, when he hit the age of 18 did his father begin to scheme. A childhood friend, Azina had been taken away from him. Except when suddenly a few years ago as he hit the age of twenty-seven, she did come back to him. As if a phantom she did appear.
As he was sleeping, she crawled up to his window. With a smile on those cute cheeks. Her purple eyes a deep maroon in the moonlight. Azina had been gifted by Dahlia. A high honor in Jakaria, especially among the court. How the more fitting should heir to the throne inherit such a gift?
It made his father so angry. So incredibly angry. That his son should know a useless art as alchemy. Not even true magic?
Beautiful Azina had never lashed out at him. Honestly, he admitted that like Dahlia she was a flower. That bloomed as age went on. In the beginning she was not the kind of girl that was asked to gatherings.
She never quite had the confidence to express herself how she wanted. As age came, she became wiser. Though only a couple of years younger than him, she always seemed like the older one.
Oh, did he admire her for it. Best of all, she treated everyone with kindness, making the world a better place. Those were the most attractive traits in a woman he had ever seen.
Thus, when she crawled through his window in the dead of night it gave him a great shock, she smiled at him with this plump lips, her dark skin nearly blue in the moonlight. A moonlight which felt cleansing, it hung so heavy in the sky everything was bathed in its heavenly glow.
For in the North of Jakaria, they worshiped the moon. It came when things were most fertile. Akino watched as she waved him over. "Hurry up now!"
Akino sat upright. Sleep draining from his body. "Azina? Oh Azina how?"
"Akino, the new royal family was wrong. I'm alive and even though I could have escaped I could not leave you behind." She paused, her long cottony hair blowing gently in the breeze. Her hair had grown back, Akino realized. She did not betray their ways.
"I never turned to darkness. I was framed, and so was family. But the thing is," She paused, her lips curling back as she cried her tears. "I had to come back for you. Please come with me." She extended her hand towards Akino.
Akino stared back at her, a tear rolling down his cheek as he saw her. "Of course." He quickly stood from his bed, grabbing his quick sack his father had trained him to keep accessible but hidden. Akino jogged up to the window, which was just a cut out of the side of the chunk of the villa. "Azina, I-"
She shushed Akino, glancing down at the ground as she sensed the minds of two guards below. "We must go now." She held out her hand. Akino grabbed it, holding on as she used some thickly rooted ivy vines to climb down the side of the main house of the villa.
The royal family did not only live among a fortress surrounded by commoners. No, the entire city was filled with only royals or those of highborn blood and noble connection. All living with their servants of course.
Akino looked down with bated breath as the two guards walked by. His chest heaving in and out. Yet he could not help but remark on how beautiful she was, eliciting her to angrily whisper at him to shut up. Azina looked down at the ground indignant.
Oh yeah, he remarked mentally, she is Azina alright. With the truth revealed, Akino reveled in seeing her again. Ready to leave his treacherous family behind. Especially for the only one in this world that he may be able to trust.
Azina slipped down the vine a bit too fast, loosening a chip in the pale adobe wall and causing it to fall near one of the patrol guards. They looked up, their suspicions rising as they spotted the two figures in the dark. She shook her head before calling out some strange and foreign phrase.
Suddenly, as if from nowhere a bird appeared. It was no ordinary fowl but a phoenix. Azina let go of the rope with Akino still attached to her, falling for a bit before landing on a saddle atop the bird's back.
Akino took some time to catch his breath after such a feat. "Azina please just let me say-"
