Work Text:
سـ
Sitara paused, reed pen in hand, staring at the singular letter she made on the paper—her silent answer to Muhammad's query: Do you know how to write your name?
She slowly turned toward him, embarrassed, but he smiled at her warmly.
"Don't look so ashamed, Sitara." He maintained a reassuring tone. "We all start somewhere, don't we?"
She laughed nervously. "I suppose so..."
"Sin..." he said, saying the name of the letter she wrote. The fifteenth letter of the Perso-Arabic alphabet. "Well, you got that one correct. One is better than none."
He took the reed pen and completed the writing of her name, each stroke fluid and filled with purpose, swift yet unrushed.
سـتـاره
It was simple, and perhaps she was merely biased since it was her name, but just this alone looked so beautiful.
"'Sitara,'" Muhammad read aloud, then looking out the window at the sun. "You know, some people believe the sun is a star." He gazed at it almost longingly.
She thought the notion was a little silly, but she knew why he brought this up.
Her name itself meant star.
"What do you think?" she asked, wondering his stance on the matter.
"The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras was the first to speculate this more than a millennium and a half ago." He turned back to her. "As for me... I still need more research." He laughed softly. "But I'll focus on the only star I can see right now."
"Which star?" she asked, confused. "It's daytime."
He sighed, giving Sitara a cheeky look. "You."
"You rascal," she snapped back. "That sounds like something I would say."
He grinned. "Doesn't it?"
While learning how to write in Mongolian, Fatima sighed.
Learning to write in Persian was already troublesome, and that's my native language! she thought, glaring at the scroll in her hands with quiet fury. Now I need to learn this?
She sighed as she furrowed her brow at the text, but stumbled upon a certain letter.
ꡗ
Looks familiar...
......
......
She looked out toward the sun, her only relief from the relentless and frigid Mongolian weather.
She smiled.