** Two stories (this seems more a poem to me) today, since I was forced to skip a day**

Today’s Word: Morganatic


He married her for her dance.
She had come to him in her seventeenth year, dressed in amorphous silks that shifted in undulating patterns -- red, green, and white -- flowing over her lithe body like quicksilver. In her bare feet she came, her Moorish eyes dark and darting above her scarf. When she moved the court moved with her, swaying with the rhythm of her hips, circling with her spine, swimming with her slim arms. She was allure, indulgence, and innocence wrapped in Baghdadi silk.
Years came and went as they do, so seldom crashing, yet moving with the steady pulse of the stars, sure of a race they shall win. The harem grew and then divided and grew again. Only the First had claim to his stores -- his sons. But the years came and gifted the First with white hairs and wrinkles, and he wanted her no more. And the day came that his silken one danced again, for joy of a union no longer morganatic.