[Excerpt from a work in progress]

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A story, and how it was told:

When Khosi Stole the Moon, 
An Aksayyadi fable, as passed down through the generations

A woman sat on the brief privacy of a bedroll and unlaced her leather sandals. She was young, not yet thirty, but her face had a somberness to it that lended age and her movements were stiff and stilted. She was still mostly uniformed in the unobtrusive blues and browns of a city investigator, and a few wire adornments hung from her neatly coiled locs. It was dusk, the light dim, and no lamps had been lit in this room. She worked quickly by touch, a familiar ritual.

Outside the closed shutters, evening sounds floated through the air, the scrape of dishes and conversations with the words stripped away. Someone was playing the pipes, badly. 

A thin curtain was pulled over the room’s only doorway. Its edges were lined with flickering lamplight from the room beyond; from that room came laughter and the smell of spices still lingering. The woman’s stomach growled. She hadn’t yet eaten. She finished removing her armour, stretched out, and rubbed at fresh bruises.

“Mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy!!!” A child of no more than five barreled through the curtain and fell flat on her face with a thud on the hard clay floor.

The woman sighed and knelt over the child. “What did we say about running indoors?”

The girl looked up at her. “I’m sorry.” She had a new graze on her chin, and her eyes went pitifully wide and filled with tears.

“Don’t try that trick with me.” The woman checked the child over. She found a few minor scrapes on the girl’s palms and her knees, but nothing more. “You’re fine. Now, what are you doing running all about without looking where you’re going?”

The girl perked up, tears forgotten. “I want a story. You promised.”

The woman winced. “Not tonight, sunshine. I’m tired.”

“You’re always tired. Or working.”

“Where’s your father? He’s better at stories,” said the woman, neatly sidestepping the accusation.

“But I want you to tell the story. Daddy can do the puppets.”

The woman tapped her belt and glanced at the closed shutters. “Did you ask Daddy if he’d do the puppets?”

“Yes.” The girl had not yet learned how to lie convincingly.

“Go ask him. Nicely, mind you. If he says yes, grab the firesteel and we’ll do the story.”

The girl cheered and ran to do as she was bid. 

“No running indoors!”

From somewhere in the wider flat, she heard her husband laugh. “We’ve raised an unmannered heathen, you know,” she called out. “I blame you.”

“Yes, she’s growing into a right proper menace to society,” came the proud response, and a handsome head stuck through the curtained doorway. Softer, he said, “If you need to sleep, I can cover for you with the little one.”

The woman shook her head. “You’ve been covering for me a bit too much lately.” She took the firesteel from the girl, who’d returned breathless and bouncing.

Her husband shrugged. “I guess we’ll make a show of it, then?”

“A show it is.” 

The man grabbed a linen blanket and pinned it to the clothesline that ran through the room, set up for precisely this purpose. He knelt by a chest tucked in the corner, and carefully removed a set of paper shadow-puppets. They were ornately carved and painted, articulated limbs hinged with metal. They seemed distinctly out of place, almost magical, against the everyday plainness of the room.

Meanwhile, the woman gathered all the lamps in the house and laid them carefully across a low shelf. Their oil-soaked wicks burned low and warm. It was a waste of good oil, perhaps, when there were so many other places where the money was needed. But the girl was beaming, and neither parent begrudged the cost.

“Alright.” The woman kicked the bedroll into it’s sleeping position and sat down. “Snuggle up. What story are we telling?”

“Khosi,” came the immediate reply.

“Don’t know why I bothered asking.” She settled back into the wall and the girl snuggled under her shoulder. The woman checked to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to remove any sharp bits before wrapping the child up in her arms. 

“You start while I finish the setup?” The man’s voice was slightly distorted by the fact he was holding at least one of the puppet’s control sticks in his mouth.

“Works for me.” Then woman leant her head back and closed her eyes, tried to remember the way it went.

Finally, she began.

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