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In a small village at the edge of the northern Gray Mountain Range, there lived a nameless woman who hid her extraordinary beauty.
She fell in love at first sight with Karel, the kingdom’s finest knight and the prince of Montferdia, who had come to explore the mountain range under the king’s command.
“What is your name?”
“…Please, Sir Knight, give me one.”
Could it be that fortune had finally found her?
That man, so beautiful and noble that anyone would covet him, also desired her.
“Shati.”
“Pardon?”
“Your name. Let it be Shati.”
After countless nights spent together, too many to count on her fingers,
he gave her a name and said,
“You will come to the capital as well.”
Karel never spoke of love.
He never introduced her to others as his lover,
nor did he allow her to roam freely outside.
He merely gifted her an annex and visited her every day, dutifully holding her in his arms.
Even so, Shati believed that he loved her.
Whenever he looked at her, his eyes, reminiscent of the dawn sea, would cloud with lust.
His perfectly straight brows would twist mercilessly, as if he could no longer endure.
His refined jawline would eagerly devour her delicate chin as though parched,
and his lips, always tightly shut, glistened with what came from her.
But one day,
when she had the honor of seeing the face of his liege, the Princess,
when she realized that the Princess bore an uncanny resemblance to herself,
when she learned that the Princess’s childhood nickname was Shati,
Shati gave up on his love.
Note: This story partially draws inspiration from Mark Twain’s ‘The Prince and the Pauper’.
