• Behind the closed papered doors of the main hall...in the darkness of the long room lit by several runged lanterns on the wall, a young woman, like a pale dogwood blossom, kneeled on the ground with folded white hands. Wrapped in a white robe and a dark red sash, she waited among an audience of overshadowed elders on a covered fire pit, the roof's chimmey above allowing morning sunlight to fall like bright mist on her pale, naked shoulders and pitch-black hair. The audience watched her soulessly, looking between the lily-white princess and the old chieftess, the mother, sitting on her throne.
    Behind the elders and the guards, on the lit walls, were the bloody and brilliant painted murals of the gods and thier punishments on the mortals who defyed their laws- ugly half-naked demons with wide, snaggle- and saber-toothed mouths that devoured the souls of criminals and adultors. Yet Aishen didn't look at them. She kept her black eyes on her white hands, and on the tiny slippers of her mother. And she waited- on her knees in such a position, as she had done for the past hour. A drop of water fell down her face, and some thought she was crying in shame. But the drop was a tear of sweat from her beaded forehead. To kneel with a swelled belly was hard for her, but her clear round face showed no pain or discomfort. Her neck was blood-red with the maroon, glass prayer beads around her neck. She waited like a lamb to the slaughter.
    Her mother put her pipe to her withered ruby lips for possibly the hundreth time since she came into the council room. Her movements were relaxed, but her eyes were blood-tasting hard on her daughter. She had said nothing for a long time. No one dared to even breathe while she sat and stewed in smoke on her high-backed bone-chair. They sat and thanked the gods that they weren't the ones sitting on the covered fire-pit.
    Birds chirped and warbled above Aishen. Wind rustled the blossoming trees outside in the gardens, she could hear it. Dew dripped from the chimmney and fell on her pale skin. Quick as the snap of an arrow, the chieftess stood and snatched at her daughter's prayer beads.

    the thread broke...it snapped and the beads of blood scattered away...they fell fell fell to be swallowed into the darkness...to bounce and clatter and roll into the chimmney light, glaring like spillt blood on the floor...

    The chieftess smacked Aishen with her strong, skeleton hand. Aishen's graceful composure cracked; she fell shattered to the floor. The guards were instantly on thier feet, as if wordlessly ordered by the loud resounding smack. From either pregnancy pains or anger or shame- it was unsure by the black curtain of hair covering her face- the daughter's slender fingers twitched and clawed at the aged wood floor, willing herself to get up with her thin arms while her mother's reedy voice said over her, "Get this filth out of my sight forever. Slaughter her like any sinful whore. And kill the boy if he ever shows his face. We'll start searching for him tomorrow. Don't disturb me for the rest of the day."
    Her mother walked out of the room and walked out of her life. Before Aishen could stand up, the guards snatched her up onto her feet. The elders rose up from thier knees to stand at a condemned princess's execution as Aisha was forced to watch them drag out the blood-stained marble altar from the shadows, to hear the sharpening of the sacrificial sword. They forced her knees to fall to the floor in front of the white pillar; her back, her neck to bend and her cheek to be held down to grind onto the cold white rock.
    Her eyes stared wide as she shuddered in spasms of terror under the executioner's dirty hands on her soft snowy skin. The black iris's looked past the darkness, past the gnarled faces of the elders, past the pitying eyes boring into her skin, past the savage gods consuming on the flesh of mortals by the fistful- she stared intently with shaking fear and closed mouth on the line of light that was the cracks of the paper doors. As morning light fell on her, as she kneeled to her end, as birds chirped in a blossom-filled spring- as dew cried for her in cold drops from the tiled roof, she stared expectantly at the entrance to the council room. 'Bordayj' she cried piteously in her head. 'Bordayj, you promised.' Tears flooded her eyes and made tiny lakes on the stone. She cried without moving her face.
    The blade hissed as it was unsheathed, sang as it was lifted up into the air. The hand on Aishen's face tensed; her lips twisted into a thin line. No one came for her. She slowly closed her eyes. The blade whistled and sliced through her neck.