The palace was almost completely silent.  She could hear Dinarzade softly coming down the hall to wake her.  As if a woman in her position could sleep.  She had already prolonged her life for several months, but how much longer could it last?  She showed no sign that she was awake until Dinarzade gently shook her.

  "Scheherazade! Scheherazade, wake up!"  

  "What is it, sister?"

  "Would you tell me one last story?  It will help me to remember you."

  "I will, if it pleases my lord to allow it."
 
    The sultan simply nodded, half asleep and slightly irritated to be disturbed so early in the morning.
  "Scheherazade, I am tired of stories about wild adventures and thieves.  Tell me a story about love."
 
      "Love!" thought Scheherazade, "Why didn't I come up with that sooner?  Perhaps the sultan will see..."
But aloud she just laughed.

      "Dear Dinarzade, those are the wildest adventure stories of all! Very well, I will tell you the story of Sita.  It begins as a simple love story, but it ends with more adventure than you have ever dreamed.  But I am getting ahead of myself.
  Sita lived long ago in India.  Her beauty was known throughout the entire world.  It was said that she was a gift from the gods, that she did not have a natural birth, but sprang up from the ground.
  Sita was so beautiful that her father was plagued by would-be suitors, long before Sita was even of a marriageable age.  In a rash moment, her father declared that no man could marry his daughter unless he could use the bow of Shiva.  Everyone knew that it was an impossible challenge.  Shiva's bow could not be strung, let alone shot.  But the declaration never bothered Sita.  Of all the suitors who had come for her hand, she had never liked any of them.  It was rumored that although she had unearthly beauty, Sita's heart could never be touched.  She was not a cold girl.  She simply had far more entertaining things to do than daydream about boys.
       But all of that suddenly changed.  One day as Sita sat watching people in the market place, she saw the most handsome man she had ever beheld.  She was too stunned to even speak.  But it was more than a physical attraction.  Somehow, she knew this stranger.  It was as if she had met him in her dreams.  All at once Sita felt love.  IT was more real than anything she had ever known.  She tried to block the feeling, or to explain it away.  But the more she tried the stronger it became.  
       Sita did not know this stranger's name, or his purpose in town, but she knew she must meet him.  While she was busy trying to decide the best way to speak to him, it hit her.  Her father's decree.  It would be useless to meet this man she could never have.  The love she had just felt swelling in her heart was replaced with a pain sharper than a knife.
       Sita fled to her room, leaving her friends confused and bewildered.  She refused to come out, would not eat, and would not explain her deep depression.
       She only came out when she was commanded by her father.  Someone had won her hand.  Not only was he strong enough to bend Shiva's bow, he broke it!  The entire palace was singing his praises.  Sita walked down the hall to meet her new husband as if she were going to face the executioner.  And  in a way she thought that she was.  Every step that Sita took down the hall was heavier than the last.  What kind of man would she see?  He must be some kind of monster if he possessed that much strength.  Would he care for her?  Or was she simply a prize?  Where would she live?  The questions were endless.  "I can't live like this," she whispered to herself.  She vowed that she would die rather than belong to anyone other than the boy in the market.
       When she finally reached the grand ballroom, her heart stopped.  And then it pounded so hard her entire chest hurt.  It was him!  The boy from the market had won her hand.  At first she just stared.  She couldn't say a single word, but her head and heart were both screaming.  When she finally found her tongue, and her senses, she crossed the room.  She tried to appear graceful for her new husband, but she was shaking too hard to even move in a straight line.  But the boy did not notice.  All he could see was her beautiful face.  The same face he saw in the market.  The face that had kept him awake every night since that day.  The face of his bride.  But the reactions of the young couple were not lost on everyone else in the room.  An old man with Rama, Vasishtha, Sita later learned, started laughing the moment he saw her.  It was as if he could read her heart.
      The night before the wedding, Vasishtha came to her and explained the mysteries that Sita had been feeling.  She was actually an avatar of Lakshmi, goddess of love and beauty.  Rama, her new husband, was the avatara of Vishnu, her heavenly lover.  She felt as if she  already knew Rama in the marketplace because in spirit she did.
       Sita and Rama were extremely happy together, and would have had a perfect life if it was not for the treachery of Rama's family."

 "Why?  What happened to them?"
 
"It is a truly tragic story, dear sister, but alas, the time for storytelling has run out."

  "I am not a heartless man,"  the sultan reassured  Dinarzade.  "I too, would like to know what happened to  the beautiful Sita.  I will allow your sister to finish her tale in the morning."

                                          

Author's note:  For this story I really tried to develop Sit'a character.  I tried to imagine what it would be like growing up knowing that you would never be married.  In the original version, Sita's feelings are not discussed, but the reader can tell that she deeply loves Rama instantly.  I wanted my story to end by explaining that the two were connected before they were born.  I also tried to get in the head of Scheherazade.  I wanted to create a tension and a fear that went along with her position.

Image info: "Wedding of Rama and Sita" link
Bibliography :  Ramayana ~R.K. Narayan 1972

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