So in my head I've created this whole world wherein Maeve and Sinbad have lived an entire life together. But writing it all out is sort of complicated because it involves a LOT of other people (as any life does). So I just wrote this little snippet where you get a little bit of an idea what their lives look like:
“That was a beautiful wedding,” Maeve sighed as she tossed her shoes into a corner of the bedroom.
“I thought Suhayl was going to do a runner for a moment there, but the moment Ouasima walked in he was entranced,” Sinbad agreed, struggling to get out of his extremely precious robes- a gift from the Caliph when their eldest married the Caliph’s grandson and heir.
“I can’t believe our baby is married,” Maeve said, having freed her hair from all the pearls and ribbons she could find, she came over to help Sinbad with his clothes.
“I know, it was just a couple of days ago that he learned to walk,” Sinbad said a little wistfully, then bowed down so Maeve could pull the heavy robe over his head.
“You weren’t even there! Nor at his birth I must add,” Maeve said, throwing a look over her shoulder at him as she struggled out of her own robes.
“You are really never going to let that go. Alright; sorry that my getting shipwrecked and marooned on an island with a wicked witch got in the way of things but I was there for Munya’s and Nima’s births so I think I get the gist of it. Besides, I actually was there to teach Suhayl to walk, I spent hours bent over that kid, holding him upright while he learned. And I even delayed my next trip out so I could be there to see his first solo steps,” Sinbad protested, pulling his sleeping-shirt over his head.
“You’re right,” Maeve admitted, but there was that twinkle in her eye that told him she was up to mischief. “I will never let that go. I think you promised me foot rubs for life among other things.” She moulded her body to his, putting her arms around his neck.
“If you play your cards right I might even rub something else,” Sinbad grinned, loving his wife’s playfulness even after 25 years together. In one move he put his arm around her waist, turned her around and lowered her down to the bed while she giggled in surprise.
After they were spent Maeve rolled off of him, sprawling onto her side of the bed and trying to catch her breath.
“Do you think Suhayl and Ouasima are ready for marriage?” Sinbad asked, staring at the canopy of their bed.
“That’s what you were thinking about?” Maeve asked, her brow furrowed, obviously a little perturbed.
“No. I was thinking about how much I love you and how I didn’t make it easier on you by being away 8 months out of every year while you stayed with the kids… But we’d sailed together for years before that, we knew each other very well and we knew what we were getting into. Sul and Ous are so young…” Sinbad explained his train of thought.
“Remember your first trip out after Muni was born? You were back in two weeks because it was so hard to be away from us. I don’t think it is going to be any easier on Suhayl and Ouasima but they are going to have to find their own way and they know who to ask for help when it all gets to be too much,” Maeve said, trying to soothe her husband’s worries for his son.
“You want to hear something funny?” Maeve asked, when she noticed her husband was still staring at the canopy.
“Sure,” Sinbad said, his head finally inclining towards her so he could meet her eye.
“Well you know how girls are amongst each other at a wedding. Ous was begging Nima for a reading of her future but you know Nima, she gets far too specific so she was all: if three days from now you get up at the first crows of the neighbour’s rooster and buy dates at the market you will get a pomegranate stain on your dress that you won’t be able to get out. So my dear sister-in-law Maha takes the first polite opportunity to change the subject to weddings, asking Ous how she felt on the eve of her weeding and Munya if she’d felt the same… Only that topic soon dried out because they realized pretty quickly they’d all been there for those occasions. The only wedding none of the women there had been to was ours,” Maeve told her husband.
Sinbad chortled: “I knew we’d forgotten something! So what did you say?”
“Well I could hardly tell them that we’d never gotten around to the whole wedding bit of the marriage! I made something up about being so nervous that I didn’t remember most of it but that the husband I got was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Maeve smirked at her husband.
“Well that you can’t blame me for! You didn’t want to get married while you were pregnant,” Sinbad pointed out.
“Well you never asked me before I got pregnant,” Maeve said. “Wait no, you didn’t even ask me, you just announced we were getting married without even asking me!”
“I was your captain, you had to do as I ordered anyway,” he said, because he loved having a pointless argument with his wife.
Maeve scoffed, like he knew she would. “You keep telling yourself that old man. Anyway, do you think there’s any point in sneaking off and getting married somewhere quiet?”
“We could go with Sul on his next trip and ask him to marry us somewhere out at sea. He’d get a kick out of that,” Sinbad suggested.
“Absolutely not, he’s taking Ouasima with him and I don’t want to be in the way of their getting to know each other better… Besides, Munya will deliver in about five months and I for one am not about to miss the birth of my first grandchild! And there’s Nima to consider, who will take care of her if I go?” Maeve said.
“In other words… you don’t want to sneak off and get married somewhere on the sly. You could’ve just said so,” Sinbad said, a little bit hurt though he understood her reasoning.
“We’ve been married for over 25 years! I don’t see how a ceremony would change that. I love you, you love me, you are my husband and I am your wife. There’s nothing anyone could say or do to make that be not true,” Maeve defended herself.
Sinbad cuddled up to his wife. “If anyone ever asks about our wedding I will say a great white wizard gave you to me on the Isle of Dawn in the middle of a rose garden.”
Maeve smiled at the romantic thought, it had taken them years after that first meeting to get together- they’d both had stuff to do after all, but she liked the idea that from that moment on they had been connected. “Back home there’s this thing known as a common law marriage. Basically it means that if you decide that you’re married and you consummate, then you are married whether there was a ceremony or not.”
Sinbad dropped a lazy kiss on her shoulder. “That would make sense for a culture that breeds the most stubborn and disobedient women I have ever had the pleasure to meet,” he hid his grin but he knew she would take up the challenge.
“Stubborn and disobedient? Me?” She said, faking outrage because she enjoyed it as much as he did. She swung a leg over him, straddling him, pinning his shoulders down with her hands. “I’m not letting you up until you take that back.”
“I’ll take that challenge,” he said, his eyes sweeping up and down, clearly liking what they took in.
By Allah, he thought, I love my life; I am the most blessed man in all of Persia.
“You sure? You’re an old man you know I don’t think- mhpf” Maeve taunted him until with a twist of his arms he knocked her arms out from under her and caught her mouth in a kiss.
Challenge definitely accepted.
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Random information of the Sinbad/Maeve world in my head:
-They only got together after Dermott was freed
-Maeve stays home with the kids in Baghdad while Sinbad continues sailing and this is really hard on both of them.
-The have three kids:
Munya: A very smart and charismatic child who has a habit of wandering around the city (especially in the places she is not supposed to go) is always befriending random people. As a teen she set up a child messenger and odd-jobs service where she gave the children a badge to wear to show they were honest and hardworking. The children gave a small part of their income to Munya who started an orphans home and school with it (her mother invested as well). She was handpicked by the Caliph to marry his grandson and heir and they were brought up together and he was taught to listen to her counsil even as she was taught to obey him. She is gay and out of duty has two sons by her husband who respects her sexuality. Her husband gets a second wife and even marries the woman Munya falls in love with to make sure the two can be together.
Nima: She can see the future from the moment she is born but it makes very little sense to her as a child (because the future is not set but dependant on so many tiny little choices). She's somewhere along the autism spectrum, possibly as Aspergers but of course they didn't have those diagnoses back then. For the longest time as a child she thought she could fly and would jump off of any and all high places she could find. You can imagine how this made her mother feel. She loved it best when her uncles would stand in a circle and toss her aruond like a ball. She loved peeling pomegranates and getting all the little seeds out whole. As an adult she still has significant problems socially and even more because people always want to know the future from her and she can't get them to understand that their future depends on the choices they make along the way (and on the choices other people make). She does advice her sister on matters of state because Munya knows what kind of questions to ask. In return for this she is given a house by the sea with servants to take care of her and very few people to bother her.
Suhayl: Named after what I think Sinbad and Doubar's father's name is. Sinbad impregnates Maeve the day he leaves for a trading trip that will take a couple of months. They shipwreck and most of the crew manages to make it back to Baghdad somehow. Sinbad and Dermott (now human) are marooned on an island with a witch who enchants them and makes them fight each other for her favour. Things get pretty heated but eventually the brothers(in-law) manage to shake the enchantment end kill the witch. They build a small boat and get picked up at sea by slavers. Meanwhile Maeve has given birth to baby Suhayl and has Doubar name him. Obviously this is a very hard time for her. Eventually Sinbad and Dermott end up on Baghdad's slavemarket where Munya (always going where she's not supposed to) spots them and tells her mother. They manage to buy Sinbad and Dermott back. This time back together is very hard on all of them. Sinbad has trouble fitting back into his "landlife" and feels guilty about that as well as all the things he has had to do while he was marooned. He has trouble connecting with his children and sees no place for himself in their lives. Maeve, seeing Sinbad struggle doesn't air her own hurts, not wanting to add to his already painful struggle. Everything comes out in an explosive argument between the two about three weeks later when Sinbad decides he wants to just get back to sea and avoid his problems that way. Maeve is livid, hurt that he is just going to walk away like that and afraid that if he does it will never be good again. So the two of them have a big fight that leaves them spent and sobbing in each other's arms. From there they can finally start re-building their relationship and their family.
Suhayl is a happy little boy who loves nothing better than to tag along with Munya when she allows it, absolutely hero-worshipping his big sister. He is just as adventurous as she is and as big a charmer as his father. He is the only one of the three who got their father's blue eyes and longing for the sea. As soon as he could talk he is asking to go with his father on his adventures but is only allowed when the whole family goes to visit Maeve's family in Eire when he is 7. The children were under Doubar's watchful eye and strict command the whole trip for their own safety.
As an adult he is much like his father only different in that he longs to get married so he can give his big heart away. He asks his parents to arrange a marriage for him when he is twenty.
Maeve has six servants in the house. Mehtap and her four daughters. She is the widow of one of Sinbad's sailors and her son died in his service as well.
Mehtap takes care of the house and the cooking.
Rasima take care of the business (though she has to pretend she has direct orders from Sinbad every time)
Nuha takes care of the finances but is a real mathematical brain who loves nothing better than to describe the world in numbers. She marries Firouz and they have one son.
Maha takes care of the children when they're little and teaches them to read and write and basic maths before the Caliph invites the children to come and learn from his tutors. She marries Dermott and has a dozen children with him. The couple and their children live most of their lives in Eire.
Farah is the youngest and helps her mother in the house but her real dream is to become a sailor like her father. Of course she is given this unusual chance.
There's also an unnamed old man who takes care of the extensive gardens.
Bryn marries Rongar but they wait a long time to have a child. Most of their lives they spend sailing with Sinbad. When she feels her biological clock is about to run out they have a child and together settle in Baghdad. They never go back to claim his prince-hood and choose to have their son remain unknown and not become an heir, feeling that that is in the boy's best interest.
Oh man, there's so much more to tell it's insane! I could go on and on. But I will stop now, mainly because it's bedtime
I would love to hear what you gals think about my far too detailed continuum!
