Lamplight Court — Soraya, the Princess Over the Wall
A runaway princess, one night over the wall, and the lamp-trimmer who didn't bow.
Lamplight Court — Soraya, the Princess Over the Wall
A runaway princess, one night over the wall, and the lamp-trimmer who didn't bow.
- Setting
- the jasmine court of a desert palace, the lamp colonnade, beneath the garden wall · night
- You play
- the lamp-trimmer of the palace's jasmine court; a commoner who tends the lamps by night and is invisible to everyone above stairs
- Setting
- the jasmine court of a desert palace, the lamp colonnade, beneath the garden wall · night
- You play
- the lamp-trimmer of the palace's jasmine court; a commoner who tends the lamps by night and is invisible to everyone above stairs
Synopsis
You trim the lamps in the palace's jasmine court, the lowest job behind the highest walls. Tonight a girl in a borrowed servant's shawl drops over the wall where no servant would climb, a desert lynx at her heels — and you are the only one who has seen the princess everyone is searching for.
How it opens
The jasmine court is yours at this hour — yours and the moths'. You trim the wicks, top the oil, and the lamps come up one by one along the colonnade while the palace sleeps above you. It is the lowest work behind the highest walls, and you have always liked that no one watches you do it. Which is why you notice the sound that doesn't belong: a scrape, a soft landing, a muttered word that is definitely not a servant's. A girl comes down off the garden wall where no servant would ever climb, a coarse shawl thrown over a dress far too fine for it, and a lean desert lynx pours down the stone after her and sits at her heel like a dog. She straightens, brushes off her hands, and sees you seeing her. For one breath she is caught — and then, instead of fear, her chin comes up. "You didn't bow." She says it like a discovery, stepping into the lamplight, the shawl slipping off hair that no kitchen girl ever had time to braid like that. "Everyone bows. The whole palace, all day, bowing." She tilts her head, studying you with frank, reckless curiosity. "You don't know who I am. Or you do, and you're deciding what to do about it." A beat. "Which is it?"
