My spine cannot withstand the pressure of sovereignty

I was ambushed and slayed by a horse thief named Ode, who sold me to the slave owner, Naheeb in Tehran. Naheeb's response to my capture and delivery to his door was a silent laughter that ended hoohahoo as his lungs ran out of air.

Pleased he was indeed, as I am one of those people who exist without my whole and can be parted in pieces and sold for more. Naheeb, I am sold to but not in complete. Ode has decided he will keep the key to my soul and when and if Naheeb sells all of my bits, he will come back and take 10 percent of the profit and share the life from my soul with Naheeb.
This is a dirty trick often played on slave owners but alas there is no one to complain to when dirty deals in souls and bodies are concerned.

Naheeb digs his thumbs in the soft of my shoulders, "Damnable bitch, tell me this, what part of you is ground softest to grist? What part is precious and beloved? That which is not frayed like this expression on your face, ugly and betrayed?"

I fall to the sand and dig with my hands, "A piece, soft indeed, with love to bleed. It is my heart, the stone beating in the center of me. Please take as you like. It has become my plight since she left me in that place for Ode to delight, to steal me and take flight."

Naheeb took my heart to Malaga. His plan in Spain was to sell it to the light skinned store owner Santi. But Santi, astute in crimes of the heart and the taste of it's flesh saw the discoloration, perforation, deterioration and demurred, pocketing his money with a knowing smile upon his face.

Stone mad, rough Naheeb was. Chastising the beating muscle all the way back to Tehran where he found me waiting for my thrashing which I received quicker than normal. "You slut, you daughter of a whore, you have lied to me no more! You have said your heart beat strong with the blood of a love you so ache and long. That it would quicken and thicken the closer I came to this woman in Spain who you pine for, but I acted in vain! You said, 'Go to Spain ask for Santi of Malaga, he will not disdain. He will see the warmth beating and let no opportunity slip, fleeting.' You lied, yes you lied good. You bitch, you are worthless like wood."

A beating I got and the beating felt right and after his rage I begged another chance. "Sell me again, please try if you will and pardon me still. I told not a lie, a mistake I have made. This love I have had is more middle in Spain. My heart will respond in this region, it is the season, my love will be there, and near the bruja who stares to the stars so clear. Go to Segovia, a lass named Pilar, she lives in tree branches close to the stars. The people will show you, guide you, she's not far. A bruja, majestic, strange, true and bizarre."

And out he went, towing my heart in a bag tied with twine thinking this beating rock may take to the hills if he became complacent. Into Segovia he finally arrived. It took many months, there were problems and people to pay off on the way. He was thinner and quieter by the time he set foot.

He went to the magistrate and begged an audience. Both men sat in stuffed chairs with mutual judgment and suspicion. Naheeb changed expressions and kindly patted the man's hand, "Kind sir I must ask, there is a strange woman, she has put me to task, to find her jewel she lost on her way, she sits in the trees to see stars bright as day. Can you guide me to her, this bruja I do seek? I am weary and bone tired, not a cent in my pocket. I will pay you thrice at the end of the week."

The magistrate rolls his hat and pats his pocket in indignation. What a question to ask such a man of his position. This arabic phenomenon with such absurd speculations of brujas in trees in a town like his.

but as he scoffed and cleared his throat he knew just who Naheeb spoke of, he made sure to draw a map instead of taking him to the orchard where the witch fed on small animals as she stared and ranted at the sky.

Naheeb kicked up dust as he walked the road to The Tree of Pilar. He wondered why the magistrate wrote it in capital letters as if a mad woman deserved them. The orchard came into view as he rounded the hill. Citrus and otherwise, these trees Naheeb had never seen and to the end of the road stood the most majestic and bizarre and within it's branches sat and ugly beautiful bruja named Pilar.

"Woman, I speak to you, there is a heart in this bag to atone. It is fine and right with love to spend and I have been told you will buy it, behold! It beats of a blood filled with broken love of a slave I do own, she is half yours if you take this piece, a token, a jewel, a bone."

Not prepared for the movements of a 1000 year old bruja, Naheeb was startled by the woman turned snake who slithered off her branch and onto his shoulder to see what fool would offer the stone of a heart of lost soul he'd enslaved. She eyed his intentions and saw the lies and greed. She realized his slave had brought this fool to her coven of trees so she may lay him out and eviscerate his existence, smiting his life. In doing so this slave would forever lose her heart as the bruja would surely devour it for dessert. A sacrifice only the truly brokenhearted would commit.

And for a moment Pilar remembered her life as a mortal so many years before. She saw what this love could have been like and the slave who lived it, became a part of her. And with the evil of her prey she grew strong and deadly around the neck of Naheed and took his life for her own and fed upon the grizzled heart in his chest and relished his squeaks of distress. She uncoiled and like the sands of time she blew to Madrid to a building filled with the smell of the love in the stone heart of the slave and there she found it's intended.

Amada, a woman so slight yet huge with a beauty above many. She sat in a fear hid well by her courage as she had seen death stare her to the soul before. This witch she trembled silently in front of was of the kind she had never known before. In awe, she felt a strange privilege to be accosted by such an majestic entity.

Pilar reached out and took Amada's throat neatly in hand and whispered this missive, "Behold beloved of a dead and broken heart. It is here with me, in this bag, a muscle from which you chose to part. In fact it has always been from the start, here with YOU as you have a part in it's discovery, in it's private hell, so dark. But alas my beauty! This heart does start as it nears you, it still loves you, a decision again, so dark so dark."

Pilar grew from the strength of Amada's defiance that pulsed through the veins in her soft, lovely neck, "I would cast a spell upon the heart and heal it whole if I knew that the slave's goal, wanted freedom from you, you warrior, little wolf, proud soul. Even now, still at night you creep slowly to the window and wonder what light does she have left to shine and where will she be in fortnight? Filled with a spite not even you know why, you wish her a blight. And unbeknownst to you she feels it with fright and loves you despite."

Pilar bent down low with eyes of a snake and kissed the lips of Amada and told her the reason for her loathing of the one who loves her, "No more rhymes because desperate is the fear of your experience of nothingness." Coming closer, Pilar whispered, "She vexed you raw with the good and bad of emotions you can never have. And in the lacking you feel, your fear turned on the delicate love of a hard to reach possibility and killed it. She is a reminder of that which you will not let yourself be." And as Amada grasped at the hands that refused to let her breath, Pilar relinquished her power over her and slithered out into the night to Tehran.

And as I lay waiting endlessly for nothing but Naheeb and his beatings to remind me I am alive, the bruja of The Trees of Pilar can upon my bits and pieced me together again. She grabbed me up with a witches force and threw me across the room, landing me with a thud. "Stupid mortal, love as you may but do not let this moment of oppurtunity wander stray. You must find this Ode, and take back your soul. Truly, look at this odd love you grasp and hold, for it's broken and old. Oh it is sweet and fine, but DO NOT to cling or try to malign, fierce fight is only for the divine. Do not go astray in depths of decay, one day there will be and you will see that it is possible to live with no one, but thee."

And as the years pass, and I have my soul at last, I sometimes sit in The Tree of Pilar, me at her knee, I never go far. She graces me with her presence you see, because there is no strife in the loyalty of the dead, free of life.