I have been planning this story for two months now. It was difficult to decide where in the time line it would fit. This story takes place in the Arabian peninsula, (in between Petra and Yathrib) around 590 B.C.

It is rated M+ for some violence and nudity *blush* and what comes after nudity *double blush* but the blushing will come until chapter two.

I changed some names because they just sounded out of place.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from Adventure time with Finn and Jake.

Chapter 1

"Oh man! Has to be a joke!" I say as I see my father, Hasan Abd- Al Adir, giving instructions to the eunuchs while pointing at his new acquisition. "Marshall! Just in time to see what I had bought for you! Look! Isn't she pretty?" His gift for me is another slave, I already know it without he telling me. Always, three times a year, the same caravan comes returning from Gaza with all kind of goods including slaves from different places around the vast world I had not had the chance to see. My father has the hobbie of buying pretty girls for his harem or mine. I already have fifteen or so of them, and I even don't know their names. I don't look at the new one, I am bored of my father buying concubines for me in order to save the face.

"Marshall! Do not turn your back on me! Respect you father!" I am turning in a corner inside the palace before he can say anything else. Even when we are alone like this he will not say my real name. I'm starting to think he already forgot. Maybe he forgot on purpose. Some wisemen say that words have the power to turn in to reality and that's why people say prayers. They say that the words have mystical properties, and that's why there are words that shouldn't be said or wrote.

My name has not been said in so much time that its pronunciation sounds weird even to me: Marceline. If someone were to call me by my name I'm not sure if I would react to it. Moreover, sometimes I forget I'm a woman.

Every day is just the same. For me the time is unreal, life is a bad joke, a bad joke in drag. The only relaxing time for me, the one thing that gives me some peace of mind is the bath. The sun is high, suffocating, it is perfect time for a bath.

As I enter the room two eunuchs come at me. "Master, should I prepare the bath for you" says one of them. I simply nod at him. The other one takes my clothes as I strip. I take a scented soap, it smells like roses. I wash myself slowly, I wash away the sweat, the apathy I feel for life, the anger I feel for my father. I know that this clean feeling is just temporary though. When I am finished, I walk in to the ground level large tub. I immerse, remaining under the water for almost a minute. The water isolates me from the outside world. When I emerge I feel much better.

After an hour or so I decide it is enough. Just when I am about to get out I hear the voices of the concubines: "Go ahead girl! Don't stand just there! Your new Master needs a towel, go go!" I see her now, the new concubine my father just bought. She is looking around searching for the Master, totally confused. I can't help but giggle, and then she spots me. "Over here! I am the master!" I say to her. She is now more confused, not knowing if I'm making fun of her. Then the concubines behind say something to her in a whisper I cannot hear. Then she locks her eyes with mine lifting her eyebrows in a surprised way. She approaches, kneeling so we are now at the same height, then she offers me the towel. I took it from her hands. As I get out totally naked she blushes, looking at one side to avoid my nudeness.

Now I am interested. She still had shyness. Looking at her blushing is funny and cute. "What's your name girl?" "Bonnibel". The concubines give her a death stare. "er... Mistress" corrects herself. From behind come a towel slap, and the girl jerks surprised: "Master! My name is Bonnibel, Master..." she corrects again, nervously. I am openly laughing now, and she blushes again.

I wrap myself with the towel. "Follow me". She immediately is behind me. I go to my room, to put some clothes. While I am dressing she is looking at the wall richly decorated with persian tapestries... "Where do you come from?" I ask her. "A small country in the north, Mist... Master" she stutters. "Hmm... Is it too far?" I say while spreading out an old map. "I don't know really... It was a long distance by land heading south to the sea. I've never left my home before so I can't measure distances. Besides I couldn't count the days inside the ship: we couldn't see the sun nor the moon ". I fold the map again looking at her and trying to imagine what it is to be in a slave ship. "... and I don't know how many days I traveled with the caravan..." she continues.

I had never talked with the concubines before, they are boring. Never seem surprised, ashamed or moved by anything, as if knowing what was their destiny and accepting it stoically, maybe it is because my father choose them very carefully. This one is different though, or so it seemed to me back in the bath room. Her eyes are alive, inquisitive she even blushed! I am intrigued.

"When night falls, meet me at the gardens" I order her spreading the map again. "Tell the concubines I had said so. They will give you proper clothes for the cold night. Now go. I have things to do" she frowns slightly and I'm not sure why. "Yes Mis... Master" she answers and goes away. Now I am alone in my room, thinking of the stars and the moon, it's amazing how the stars can be seen by two people at the same time despite the distance...

I summon Phineus, "Finn, go to the library and bring me the sky chart please". He looks at me grinning and making a face like saying I just saw the way you look at the new one. "Nonsense! I don't like her it's just... just... she is weird; I heard about those barbarians but had never seen one before. I'm intrigued, that's all " I say to him. He leaves immediately still grinning not believing a word I said.

Finn, as I nickname him, is one of my eunuchs. He's different though: I consider him more like my friend than my servant. He was castrated at such young age that he looks like a boy of twelve or thirteen years old though he is twenty four. He'll never grow a beard and his voice is quite tiny. The first time I met him he greeted me saying Mistress. I smiled at this gesture of frankness. The other servants warned him that he shouldn't call me that but Master instead, because it was forbidden to say I was a woman. Then he said that was nonsense. "How can I deny what is evident to the eyes?!" he said. He was warned again but he insisted it was stupid to hide the truth. Maybe he didn't measure the consequences at that moment. It didn't matter what I said or how much I pleaded to my father, he made him got his tongue cut off.

Later I learned he was a greek fellow, a philosopher apprentice who often traveled with his master from Samos to Egypt and Mesopotamia, gathering knowledge. At the age of twelve, in one of those travels he got caught in the middle of a battle, his master was killed and he was sold as slave. He was sold and bought many times before he came here. As philosopher the truth is his ultimate goal: the most valuable good a man could get. Stubborn philosopher...

Night fell. The garden is big and some trees round the perimeter, in the center there is a fountain. As always there are no clouds in the sky, and a beautiful bright crescent moon shines. It's a cold night but it doesn't bothers me, cold helps me clear my mind. This dessert landscape is unbearable hot in the day and dead cold at nights. Even in this rough weather a proper care of the palace gardens makes this place a small oasis in a mostly dry isolated merchant town.

As I inhale profoundly the air that tastes like a recently moisten hot rock, I hear steps behind me. "I'm here as told, Master". She doesn't stutter anymore at the title. She is embracing herself from the cold maybe thinking I'm crazy to be in the gardens with this temperature. "Lie on the grass" I tell her bluntly. She doesn't move. "Lie-on-the-grass". She obeys this time, insecure of what is about to happen. I am giggling on the inside trying to suppress a smile that wants to come forth. For an instant I imagined dirty things. I am grinning but she can't see me for she is looking at the night sky in awe.

I lie next to her. "That long one is An-nahr, its last star is ākhir al-nahr is the brightest one, you see? That other one, the one with three stars in line is Al-jabbar..." I talk endlessly about constellations 'cause astronomy is one of my passions. Being imprisoned here makes me very curious of the outside world and all the knowledge of the ancient people. "There's a tale that says that in the beginning all stars were just wandering in chaos, and then some mighty Marduk sang a poem, and it was such a beautiful poem, that the stars fixed themselves while others acquired a route and then the cosmos became ordered". She hears me silently and then I make a pause and she finally speaks "It's beautiful... they look just the same back at my homeland". Looking at the night sky I see a shooting star, and then looking back at her I see a falling tear.

An-nahr: Eridamus, the river.

ākhir al-nahr: The brightest star of Eridamus

Al-jabbar: Orion

The tale about the order of the cosmos is part of Babylonian cosmogony.

I don't know though, if the arabian names for the constellations named here were used at the time I have placed our story. I apologize for the inaccuracy. Those names were taken from an arabian translation (Al majisti. IX century A.C.) of the Ptolemy compendium (Mathematike syntaxis. II century A.C.) who probably took it from Hipparchus of Nicaea (II century B.C.). Phew! Sometimes knowledge is just like a big gossip!

However, it is told that the most part of astronomic knowledge acquired by greeks and arabians came from the ancient Mesopotamic civilization: the sumerians and babylonians (from 3000 B.C to 1531 B.C approximately).

This doesn't mean of course that Ptolemy and others didn't contribute with new valuable knowledge.