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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7217997" data-attributes="member: 20323">[SECTION][align=left]http://i.imgur.com/hwLpNWG.jpg[/align]As the invisible Easifa drifts through the caravanserai's tunnels like an evening breeze, Usqual's eyes sparkle above his veil. The jann knows that stories have power. His voice is steady yet sing-song, wavering between the tone of one seeking solace in tales and the one issuing ominous warning disguised in flower prose. "My most favorite of stories? Ah, when I was only older than these boys by a sand's width," he spreads his hand gesturing to Hadia al-Sarraf's sons Na'im and Naji, a thin stream of glowing sand leaving his grasp to swirl and hiss upon the rug you sit upon, forming a sparkling mote of ambiguous miniature sand shapes. "This is the story that was told to me, that I now tell to you...""Shakar, the hero after whom my people the Shakari are named, was a great warrior who'd killed every one to challenge him. Yet his heart was unsettled," narrates Usqual as a small turbaned scimitar-wielding warrior appears in the glowing sand that seems to hover just above the rug, as if standing on the edge of a dune and scouring the horizon. "He longed to be reunited with his family who'd taken refuge in the great city Ubar, but the Misty Shore separated them and it was a boundary not one jann was permitted to cross. Yet, day and night, Shakar went out into the desert seeking a way to cross the impenetrable threshold, calling to the stars and moon to aid him. No settlement would give him peace. Shakar searched until he could search no more." Some of the sand forms into a distant palace wavering as if in the desert's heat, a sandstorm preventing the sand-form hero from approaching until he falls to his knees in despair. Small wisps of glowing sand hover above your heads like stars."Thereupon, Shakar crossed paths with a woman – the Loregiver – and thus she spake unto him, 'Why do you seek in the world what lies beyond it? Why do you search for what you already possess?' For such was the wisdom of the Loregiver that it left Shakar in bewilderment." Here, Usqual crosses his mismatched copper-and-green eyes to the amusement of the two boys. The glowing sands continue illustrating the tale with a robed wavering image of a woman, presumable the Loregiver, resting her hand on Shakar's shoulder. "Sitting in silence with the Loregiver's word, far from the cities of man and tribes of other jann, Shakar realized that his journey revealed the way through the Misty Shore. But he couldn't walk it alone. Therefore, he went unto the coalition known as the House of Sihr and shared the wisdom he had gained. From Shakar, the sheikhs of my people learned how to take caravans along the secret routes between the wolds. For while one jann could not cross that threshold, in the tribe lay the strength of many hearts."A glowing sand caravan traces its way across the rug, wending around tea cups, dates, and bowls of salt. "And they say that Shakar did one day visit his family in Ubar, but they were afraid of the secret caravan routes, and so they remain in Ubar till the day that my tribe frees them from their fear and shows them the way." Spreading his hands, the jann bows his head, signaling the end of the tale.[/SECTION]</blockquote>

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