I open eyes, and they are not moist, but eyelids like glass over stone. Not uncomfortable.
"So is this Mikhail's Paradise?" I whisper, and my voice is even sweeter than my living one.
Izad smiles from beside me, and I am in my own bed in leopard skin, not beside the Lake of Memories. I hear no Bell Trees of Paradise, and it is not a burning haired archangel that greats me, but Izrail's bastard son.
"Did you really think a necromancer would let you die, Rani? I made some adjustments according to your beloved neighbors to you and Ghazal, as the flesh is gone, but eternity is much stronger, and the treasures of Lotan endure for a thousand and one lifetimes."
I look down at my arms and hands – fingers of diamond, knuckles of ruby, veins of emerald and desert mirage. My skin is gold, and the abaya I wear is the finest silk of midnight from Allat's kingdom.
"So you have stitched me back together with your strange alchemy. Better alive than dead, I suppose."
"I am owed a poem, after all."
I stand on silver feet, and look in the mirror. The treasures the djinn, dakinis, and peris have donated from their beloved mantels has formed my new flesh. It is an act of love greater than the word Habibi itself. I cannot find anything to mourn in my obsidian eyes.
"I will write you many poems, Moonkissed Izad, but first, the defeat of the Wicked King Samael, who has plagued Lotan since he first fell, must be sung."
Izad smiles his scarred smirk. "I will sing it with all my strength."
"And Ghazal?"
"Fletched of phoenix feather, beak, and ash now. The birds are immortal, after all, and they donated the burnings of their eternal nests easily."
"Ghazal!" I rush outside to see my now brilliant, burning phoenix roc awaiting me.
He chirrups sweetly. "Fly with me, Habibi."
Girl and her first poem become one in the sylvan skies, and all is well in Lotan.
TO BE CONTINUED