Beauty and the Brains

Prince Nuru was not one to typically spill gossip. He favored the calm and measured approach. He would listen, and he would think. He read extensively, often to the annoyance of their archeologists. He was often found in his youth buried among the scrolls, and even though he took great care to regard their preservation, the scholarly types had still been in quite the panic every time.

It made the desire to talk on this new prince very strange. He had stolen glances when not outright staring the entire night, and for once, Nuru hadn't just felt annoyed or frustrated by the gawking. No one else had either, not even the seemingly unbound brute that sat beside the prince.

"Someone is on your mind, aren't they?" His aid said as her fingers gently pulled the fine crane bone comb through his natural golden white hair. It had a natural radiance of warmth that few could resist, so the royal wigs had become a necessity to ensure he had the ability to even be heard.

"Perhaps." He said gently, blushing just a little more than he wanted to. It shone under his soft brown cheeks with a warm and pleasing hue. He often got embarrassed by his aid. She was the only one who truly knew him. Maryjane was wiser than most of the very academics that had once fretted needlessly over his studies, and she was half even the youngest of their ages.

"Hmm. Must have been quite the gentleman already." Nuru blushed further, and the visage of her giggling smile behind him grew with her joy as the candles illuminated them.

"We have not even exchanged words."

"So there is someone." He was caught, and he knew it. He sighed as she leaned forward with her hands on his bare shoulders. "Got you." She whispered teasingly with her plump pink lips. She was firenzian with thick red hair that fell around her face like a bell, hiding the right eye. Her dark green eyes resembled deep emeralds that hid as much secrets as light in their crevices. Her mischievous and angular face with a boxy nose and sharp narrow eyes did little to hide her vulpine nature.

"Must you?" Nuru responded, and she giggled warmly as she hugged his shoulders with her warm and milky white arms. Her hair fell down and splashed over his shoulders and chest as her arms embraced him.

"I must." She whispered tenderly, the plush softness of her large breasts pressing into his back through his own sheer silver camisole and her thicker cotton white one. He shivered gently, leaning back a little against her, resting his face in the crook of her neck for a moment.

"He is their prince..." He whispered privately against her ear as Maryjane's long red nails lightly traced under Nuru's camisole and felt the soft curve of his small chest. He was slight but larger than nearly any other man. She was the inverse. Curvy, plush, warm, and buxom. The picture of female beauty in their world, where he was an anomaly of men. Blessed by Isis, he was her vessel and her will. Surely, that meant something.

"Tell me more." She whispered as she moved out of view. Nuru's breathing grew paced.

"He... he looked so nervous... So thrown off guard..." He let out a steaming breath as his legs moved from Maryjane's ministrations. "M... Maryj...!" His voice caught in his throat, stifled soon by a harder cry.

Her giggle reverberated up and through his core, resulting in a whining shudder as the prince gripped his chair and her fiery hair firmly. He lost all voice for a few minutes before she finally ascended again to meet his eyes and rest her palms on the prince's warm and trembling thighs. "That should loosen your tongue just a little." She licked her lips clean with a soft giggle.

"S... So mean." He whispered softly as she leaned in and kissed him, relaxing together for a moment as they shared his arousal between their lips.

"You love it, sweetie." She smiled. "So. Is he cute?"

"Unbelievably." He whispered gently.

"Hmm, well. Get to know him." She smiled warmly, lifting his chin with her first two fingers and smiling tenderly. "We know there are ways to enjoy love unseen."

"L-love? So hasty..." He murmured. He turned away with crossed arms, which made his plump aid giggle as she settled her plush hips onto his smaller yet still well shaped thighs. He gasped gently, further feeling the pressure of her.

"Oh, perhaps. Perhaps." She whispered, lightly scratching under his chin. "Well, what else was discussed?"

"Mmm..." He purred for a moment at the tenderness of her nails, leaning toward her as the chair lightly creeked with their weight against the marble floor.

Their room had been prepared out of the duchess suite. A massive circular room, comparable to three peasant housings, had a dome roof entirely made of crystalline glass and shone the room in rich sunlight during the day. At night, a full view of the stars. It naturally refracted it to bathe the room during certain days in an aurora of shifting colors, turning the silver plated and mirroring walls into a living swirl of colors. The bed was a large triangle that had been made just for their arrival in a rough idea of the nile pennisula. It was draped with a thick and warm red comforter layer over with a soft cotton sheet of gold. The dressers were all brought in from home with him, rich hand fashioned crocodile bone art and carpets with the mirrors made fron silver taken from the nile itself, and fashioned like a rising sun. The plentiful white and red pillows, shrouded by frilly lace covers, were appreciated by the often soft addicted son of the pharaoh.

It all made Nuru feel very happy as the radiant colors of the sun made him feel more at home. This land was... strange. It was cold and often rained. The ground was soft everywhere, like by the Nile bed, and it stank of a constant mildew in the air that he could not tell was from moss or the staff. It was all so unsanitary, and if he saw one more rat catcher running along the halls chasing one the size of a cat, he may just consider fleeing back home. Treaty be damned.

Unfortunately, he was here to hopefully secure a marriage with their princess. He was privately hoping she understood his arrangement with Maryjane but was prepared for the consequences should he be made to choose. She was, too. "They want you to marry their princess, just like Uncle wants." She sighed lightly, slowly standing and moving across the mix of carpets and polished marble flooring that so nicely reflected the rainbow of lights. Her feet strode with a daintiness that would shock most.

"Unfortunately, they seem amenable to father's wishes. It is the nest choice to secure the route through the strait, and England has been growing in power. Infern has started looking along with all of Europe toward Africa, and we must..." His hands silently gripped to the edges of his camisole. He recited the words that had kept him sane through the entire meeting back home that had more or less been a collective blackmailing by Father and his advisors to strongarm Nuru into coming here. "We must... secure... alliances... before our people become..." He choked out the words. "Targets."

Maryjane pulled him into a close hug as she enveloped the prince in his favorite crane feather robe. "It is the worst tragedy of royalty... all these shining palaces... just to make your children as much a prisoner as others." Nuru's fingers gently traced through faded marks on Maryjane's back. A small part of him remembered the cries of her 'owners'. He relished them, just a little.

"I hate cages..." He whispered softly, settling against her bosom as he breathed quietly. "They have not even truly introduced us. They expect us to spend our lives and make children together just overnight?" He scoffed against her gentle flesh. "Ridiculous old fools..."

"They are bloody people. All the more reason to build walls and safeguards from them..." She was saying it to help Nuru's resolve, but just as much she was trying to convince herself.

"By handing over a sacrificial lamb... how befitting of their bloody god." He moved away from her, running a hand over his face and grasping the crystal round glasses he favored privately. Slipping them on, he relaxed as they helped his mystic eyes more closely see the world in more practical colors.

"Hey. Don't think of it that way!" She responded and stood, following him closely as he walked across the room to fish out a scroll. "You are no sacrifice." She kissing his temple affectionately.

"Then why does it feel like I have stepped into a lion's den? Hm. How time turns things around." He chuckled at the irony as he read an account of Rome. How Christians now called themselves the lions and forgot the very misery of the symbol and it's fierceness. "Barbarians."

"The prince seems different. I hear he does not worship their god. He worships someone closer to home." Nuru slowly quirked a brow as he looked away from the dust papaya.

"He, doesn't?" He had found him lovely, but their talk had reminded him of where they were. He had begun to think of Edan as another drooling gawker he just happened to find cute, but that changed things.

"I hear he worships a goddess." She smiled, gently stroking his hair. "A lady of flames, yet also of love."

"How... romantic." He mused lightly. "Befitting of his home, yet..." He smiled just a little. Maybe there was something a little more to this one bloody royal. Maybe.

If only he wasn't going to marry his sister.