“Dust Motes and Desert Winds..”By The Authenticator

“Dust Motes and Desert Winds..”

Middle Eastern Folklore, Myths & Legends
By The Authenticator


   Here we are again; another day another story, two down, two to go in the saga of the merchant who found himself on the foul side of a Marid Jinni's temperament and three Travelers whose extraordinary lives, once recounted to the Jinni, would be enough to the merchant reprieve of the jinni's fatel vengeance. I hope you all enjoyed the first traveler's tale of his scorned wife who in her rage left her humanity be-hind, and now sadel up your camel as we trek once more unto the “Arabian Nights” for the second Traveler's tale…

Today's Tale:That of the Second Traveler, His Wife and Wastrel Brothers

     Once upon ( yet another ) time, our story begins with a death, the death of an opulent merchant  who had three sons, each of which was endowed with a small fortune in inheritance with which they pursued to follow in their father's footsteps.Sadly though for two of them, their disreputable, neerdowell natures would squander their innate windfall and they would come to rely on their third brother and his far more noble and amiable character.

    This brother,( our second traveler) grew to be an ornament to his line, forthright and efficient in his business dealings ( which he profited from greatly ) and upstanding throughout all his personal affairs, whereas his brothers were each more fickle, erratic, fanciful and overambitious than the last and it was with this state of affairs that the three set out seeking their fortunes.
   The nobler brother set himself up with a reasonably upscale shop in a modest port city as he traded in everything for antiquities to spices and as he possessed a natural  measured shrewdness, he rarely ever made a poor arrangement or bargain and in no time at all his initial allowance had been tripled

   Meanwhile the negligent brothers got it in their heads to travel far abroad for the rarest of commodities for most exotic of markets and though this might have worked in better circumstances, with these two and their tepid non-committal tendencies, it became nothing more than an excuse for indulgence, waste an excess, and lo as predictable as moths to flames, they returned defrocked and pettiness to their brother's stead, pockets empty and fortunes squandered

     What is our noble protagonist to do? Well what else could he do; he tricated his fortune and reambrust his brothers, it mattered little to him after all, he lived always within his original means since  he( and his brothers incidentally) was reasonably well-off to begin with and saw.no reason to exceed, so he restored his brothers’ fortunes and the two set out to travel again, only this time, as a means to thank him, they endeavored to entice their brother to join them.

   Naturally at first blush he was indignant,his brothers had traveled and returned each poor as poppers, meanwhile he  had an honest living and made a king's ransom of it, five years of persuasion later though, he finally relented but not without a few percussions of his own.
       By this time, he had made 6 times his original inheritance, and therefore split it in half and gave a third to himself and his brothers and the rest he stored away in case they met with disaster,they could each begin again and with this contingency in hand,he set sail with his brothers.

    Eventually they came upon a port city many times the size of the one they had left and the shrewd bother met with much success ( in fact increasing his investment tenfold) and while his brothers drank away what little they had made,  he found himself standing peacefully on a shore, where suddenly he found himself transfixed by a beautiful woman.

   She was poor, but nevertheless he saw good there, and they talked the whole night through,and this was followed by many more similar days and nights until at last she asked him to marry her and if, she said, he could find it in his heart to look beyond her low station, she would endeavor to make him the happiest man the world had known up to that point.

    They were happily married and eventually the time came for the brothers to return home, the newlyweds left with a fortune that would make some of the poorer among sultans envious,so much so that he had to borrow space of his brothers’ ships, a fact which quietly enraged them as their own coffers sat lighter than a Turkish feather and so they resolved for vengeance and ensured their brother's ship would find its way to treacherous waters and sink that they could obscand with their brother's fortunes and need never again by shamed by the shadow of his success… and it might have worked were it not for the fact that their sister-in-law was hiding a secret.

    For you see, unbeknownst to all three, she was a Jinni, and only manifested as poor to avoid austintation and engage the people she met on terms of their honest character,a test which her human husband had passed with flying colors and who she did love every bit sincerely as she said and more for it. So when the ship began to go down she woke and spirited him away to a new safe island where she explained  EVERYTHING and told him how she sought vengeance on her brothers-in-law, knowing not only this recent slight but also their generally freeloading modes of conduct.

   Reluctantly, and after much convincing, her husband acquiesced under two conditions, that she could neither kill nor physically harm them to which she agreed and so she brought down their ships and whisked them off, transforming them into to black dogs and presenting them to her husband as a late wedding gift.

He returned home with them and reopened his shop, his wife said she was sorry about the fortunes he had lost on the downed ships but that she would do what she could to ensure he would prosper even more than he could by his own considerable talents, and truly he couldn't have imagined how true to her word, and her duties as a wife she would come to be…



   And as to the brothers, well it's safe to say that while husband and wife lived long and happily ever thereafter, the brothers’ fates shall it be said, went to the dogs?

…

 And so ends another story, I hope you all enjoyed it and please if you like this mix of myth and Magick, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel The Authenticator: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA1Fkgi1ebZiO_0b-hNun7Q
( And yes I realize I forget to add the link last week, I admit these often keep my up til the last minute and I was frankly exhausted)