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History Would Call Her a Devil Woman
But that was worth the cost, wasn’t it?
The world of men never knew what to do with women who behaved like devils.
They had many names for her in particular. Sheba. Shiva. Shveta. The names changed with the centuries, countries, and the tongues — never amounting to more than the sum of the woman she was.
And she adapted to the climate — political and otherwise — of each land she crossed into. They were just the games humans liked to play because humanity so loved to distract themselves away from their own mortality.
Once, a man saw her shift skins before she slid into the relief of a riverbed. Her feathered cloak sat on the bank, all the easy for the taking — and take he did. Men throughout time were always keen on taking what wasn’t theirs to own.
She allowed him to think he had control. She wept and pleaded like a common villager girl who did not want to marry the local drunkard who’d killed his first wife. The tears were easy to conjure, as simple as taking a breath and sighing.
The man’s face softened even though his intentions didn’t. In his language he spoke of things like fate and the paths of stars — nothing he really knew about, instead just the things he had heard from the village elders and peddled as his own grand…
