The memory rose unbidden, as it always did when the stone walls of the academy pressed too close—when the scent of ink and old parchment replaced the wild, sun-baked grass of the plains.
Hiral closed his eyes, and he was seven years old again.
The world was an ocean of gold and green, rippling under a sky so blue it ached.
Somewhere behind him, the soft bell-like clinks of the sheep's lead bells drifted on the wind.
He was lying on his stomach, chin propped on his fists, watching a beetle scale a blade of grass, when her shadow fell over him.
"Tengrily, my dear baby," his mother said, her voice warm as summer honey. "The sheep are fat and happy. Shall we stretch our legs?"
"Amma, I'm not a baby any more! I'm seven!" Hiral, nicknamed Tengerily, answered back sulkily, his pouting baby face puffed up.
"You'll always be my baby, Tengerily~"
Before he could protest, she scooped him up—effortlessly, as if he were made of thistledown—and swung him onto the saddle in front of her.
Her mare, Rururi, flicked an ear and sighed, but she knew the rhythm of this dance.
And then they flew.
The plains blurred beneath them as his mother urged Rururi into a gallop, then a full, thunderous run. But this was no ordinary ride.
Hiral watched, breath caught in his throat, as his mother's eyes narrowed—that fierce, joyful focus he knew so well.
She shifted her weight, pulled a short bow from her back, and in one fluid motion, nocked an arrow and released.
A desert hare tumbled end over end in the grass. She whooped, a sound so wild and free it made Hiral's chest swell with a pride so big it almost hurt.
"Amma, you're the strongest person in the whole world!" he shouted into the wind.
She laughed, low and rich, and reined Rururi to a slow stop. Then she lifted him, twirled him high above her head until the sky and the grass swapped places, spinning and spinning, both of them laughing until his stomach ached.
She set him down, cupped his face in her calloused, sun-warm hands, and pressed her forehead to his. "No, Tengerily, my darling baby blue sky. I'm strong because I have you. And you know what?"
"What?"
"I'm strong enough to let you fly one day. Higher than any eagle. Farther than any plain." She kissed the tip of his nose. "So don't you ever be afraid to fly."
That night, they lay on their backs outside the tent, the sheep settled in a woolly halo around them. The sky was a spill of stars.
"Story," he demanded, poking her arm.
"Ah, the little sage demands wisdom," she said, pretending to be stern. "Which one?"
"The Sage and the Fool. You know my favorite one."
She smiled in the dark. She always smiled when he asked for that one.
"Once," she began, "the Sage lived on a mountain of perfect answers. And the Fool lived in a valley of beautiful questions. They hated each other."
"No, Mama, you skipped the part where the Sage threw rocks at the Fool's house!"
"Patience, little one. I am the storyteller." She tickled his ribs. "Fine. The Sage threw rocks. The Fool set the Sage's beard on fire. They fought for a hundred years. The Sage said, 'Order is everything.' The Fool said, 'No, chaos is the only truth.' And they fought so hard that mountains rose and rivers changed course."
Hiral nestled deeper into her side. He knew this part. But he loved the next part best.
"Then one day," Uhuru continued, her voice softening, "after a thousand arguments, the Sage's roof collapsed in a storm. And the Fool—without thinking—held up a beam so the Sage could crawl out. And the Sage, without thinking, pulled the Fool up after him, even though the Fool had called him a dried-up old twig just the day before."
"They didn't say sorry."
"No," she agreed. "They looked at each other, covered in mud and blood, and for the first time, the Sage noticed how the Fool's eyes crinkled when he laughed. And the Fool noticed how the Sage's hands shook when he was scared. And they realized they had been building the same world all along—just from different sides."
Hiral was quiet. Then: "Do they stop fighting?"
"Never," his mother said. "But now they fight like this—" She grabbed his hand and pretended to wrestle him, but gently, and then kissed his forehead. "With love. Because the Fool needs the Sage's map. And the Sage needs the Fool's courage to leave the mountain."
She tucked the blanket around him. "You, my darling Tengerily, have the look of a Sage about you. One day you'll find your Fool. And you'll build something beautiful together."
He smiled, already half-asleep. "What if I'm the Fool?"
She laughed, low and warm. "Then you'll find your Sage and he'll keep you out of trouble. Now sleep, my little question-asker."
****
The memory shattered like a dropped cup.
Hiral was fifteen now, standing at a frost-rimed window in the imperial academy, his knuckles white on the sill.
Behind him, his desk groaned under a mountain of papers—treatises on logistics, military strategy, imperial law.
His father's voice echoed in his head: 'You better be better than your brother. You will be perfect. Your mother's tribe's safety depends on your achievements.'
But his heart was still out on the plains.
And so his mind replayed the scene once again,
The day he lost his freedom, his home…
It had begun like any other morning.
The sun had barely spilled gold over the eastern grasses, and Hiral had been helping his mother pack the felt mats after a night of gentle rain.
The sheep were restless, skittish—something in the air—but his mother had only laughed and ruffled his hair. "The world holds its breath before a storm, Tengerily, my baby blue sky. But we've weathered a hundred storms."
She had been mid-sentence, mid-smile, when the riders came.
Not traders. Not neighbors.
Imperial soldiers, a dozen of them, their lacquered armor flashing like beetle shells.
And at their head, on a horse too tall and too still, sat his father—Minister Yan from the capital of the Eastern Empire.
Hiral had seen the man perhaps four times in his life, each visit colder than the last. But today, his father's face was not cold. It was calm. That was somehow worse.
"Uhuru," his father said, dismounting without haste. He did not look at Hiral. He looked only at Hiral's mother. "The boy comes with me. Now."
His mother stepped forward, one arm already curling around Hiral's shoulders. "You have no claim here, Tufan. You gave him to me. You signed him to my tribe on his naming day."
"I am revoking it." His father's voice was flat, bureaucratic. "My heir is sick. The academy requires a son of my blood to take his place, or the family loses its standing. Hiral is that son now."
Hiral felt his mother's grip tighten. "No."
"It is not a request."
And then—then—the soldiers moved.
Not to seize Hiral.
Not yet.
Two of them dismounted and walked, unhurried, toward the grazing sheep.
One drew a curved knife from his belt.
He picked up a lamb—the little black one with the crooked ear, Hiral's favorite—and held it by the scruff, the blade resting against its throat.
"Every minute you delay," his father said, still in that same quiet, terrible voice, "I will take something else. First the livestock. Then the people. Your sister's family in the western camp. Your grandmother in the medical house, if I must. I do not wish to be cruel, Uhuru. I simply wish to be efficient."
His mother's face did not crumble.
It hardened, like molten glass thrown into water.
But Hiral, pressed against her side, felt the fine tremble running through her body—the kind that came not from fear, but from the violent effort of holding back a storm of her own.
"You didn't care for him before, and it shows that you don't truly care for him now either. And yet, you're willing to kill the innocents just to take him away and use him, your own son?" she fumed.
"I would slaughter the world for my legacy," his father replied. "And you know I can. The empire does not care for nomads. You have no witnesses here nor allies that would testify for your sake, especially against me, a minister of the Empire."
Uhuru glared and bit her lips from rage.
Hiral felt the tension and the fierceness of his mother's love as she kept him behind her.
The soldier with the knife yawned, bored, and pressed the blade just deep enough to draw a thin red line on the lamb's neck.
The lamb bleated—a small, confused sound.
As he saw the blood flowing from the innocent animal, Hiral broke.
"Stop," he said. His voice came out too high, too young. He stepped out from behind his mother. "I'll go. Just… stop."
His mother caught his wrist. "Tengerily, no. You don't understand what he'll—"
"I understand that the lamb will die."
He looked up at her, and for the first time in his short life, he tried to smile like an adult—like someone who had already lost.
"And I understand that you'll come for me. You always do."
Her grip loosened. Just for a moment. Just enough.
The soldiers moved faster than he expected.
One grabbed him by the collar, another pinned his arms behind his back.
He was lifted, kicking, off the ground—not roughly, but with the efficiency of men who had done this a hundred times.
"Tengerily!"
His mother lunged.
Two soldiers stepped between them. She shoved one—he staggered—she clawed at the second's face, drawing blood—and then his father himself moved.
He backhanded her across the mouth. Not hard enough to knock her down. Hard enough to split her lip and send a thin ribbon of blood down her chin.
"He now belongs to me, don't intervene again," his father threatened, "For the next one that would bleed might just be your sister's new born babe. Do you understand?"
He pointed at his men stationed in the west.
His mother stood frozen, chest heaving, hands curled into claws at her sides.
Her eyes met Hiral's.
And in that look—that terrible, burning, loving look—she said everything she could not speak: I will find you. I will burn this empire down for you. Wait for me.
They threw Hiral onto a horse behind a soldier. As the party wheeled and began to ride, he twisted in the man's grip, craning his neck to see his mother.
She was running after them.
Her braids undone, her bare feet tearing over stones and thorns, her voice raw as she screamed his name.
The carriage—for they had brought a carriage, a black iron thing waiting a quarter mile away—grew closer. She ran faster. She was gaining.
"Tengerily! MY BABY!"
He reached out a hand, small and desperate, as if he could bridge the distance by will alone.
Then his father's horse cut across her path.
She dodged—almost fell—kept running. But the carriage door was opening. A hand shoved Hiral inside. The door slammed. The driver cracked the whip.
Through the tiny barred window, Hiral watched his mother shrink.
She was still running, still screaming, still fighting against a world that had already decided she would lose.
The dust from the wheels rose around her like a funeral shroud.
She became a speck.
Then a ghost.
Then nothing.
Only the thin, fading echo of his mother's voice, dissolving into the wind over the wide plains.
****
She had tried, afterward.
Three times she came to the capital, riding for weeks across the plains, only to be turned away at the city gates.
The third time, Hiral saw her from a tower window—small and fierce, shouting his name.
And he stepped back into the shadows, pressed his hand over his own mouth, and did not answer.
Because his father had made it clear: Every time she comes, the tribe loses a trading permit. One more visit, and they lose winter grain. Two more, and they lose access to the western wells.
So Hiral learned to be silent.
He learned to turn away.
He learned to hide his love like a weapon, sharp and hidden, because the only way to protect her was to let her believe he had forgotten.
That night, alone in his cold room, Hiral whispered the story of the sage and the fool to himself.
As he remembers the story he also remembered the way his mom's voice dipped low when the Fool set the Sage's beard on fire.
The way she'd tickled his ribs during the hundred-year war. He recalled his mother's laughter—that full, unguarded sound that made the sheep lift their heads.
"You'll fly free like the eagle."
He had not flown free.
He had been caged.
But he had survived.
He had the highest marks in the academy.
He has done his best to be deemed worthy of his father's grace and trust.
By doing so, he had ensured that his mother's tribe received fair trade—not through kindness, which his father would have sniffed out and crushed, but through careful leverage.
A whispered word here. A redirected shipment there. His father believed Hiral was obedient, broken, hollowed out by pressure into a perfect imperial tool.
Let him believe it.
And yet even as his plans went as expected he couldn't help but lament the price of his actions.
His mother's broken heart.
His mother now truly believed that her Tengerily was no more, her baby blue skies forever turned away from her.
Such price made Hiral question if he really was like the sage as his mother once said, or more like the fool…
Perhaps I am both…
Hiral with pressed lips thought as he looked out the window at the direction where the plains was at.