The jinni's voice was like an anchor in the fog of fragmented emotions and half-formed visions, giving Miria a sense of focus. Memories of Tamal murmuring "Messi" with a hasty bow, downcast eyes, and lips drawn tight into a thin line rippled and faded behind Curdle. Miria hardly noticed. All she could feel was the grit and sand on her skin, the toil of a long day's travel in aching feet, and remnants of the hot sun lingering in brittle hair. She was no longer the pampered girl adored by her family but the nomadic merchant, aimless, loveless, shattered. All because of the jinni. 

At once, perhaps unbeknownst to Curdle, he became the image of Tamal, sneering down at Miria, his eyes cold and empty. So many years she had mistook that gaze for sadness, for the lost hope of a broken slave. The memory of such foolishness angered her, pulled her to her feet, and she seethed. "No, it was my mistake for knowing you, loving you, [i]trusting[/i] you! You are supposed to be dead! You're..."

She paused, took a wavering step back, shook her head. Up until that moment, she wanted nothing more than to lash at him, to throw words at him in shrill screams and hope those words held enough weight to actually hurt him. But there was a strange sense of realism in talking to Tamal that she couldn't place, like reliving an actual memory instead of a dream. It altered Miria's perception of her visitor, his image flickering between that of the spiteful Tamal and the humble jinni she had met so recently at the market. The jinni with the urn...

Miria gasped, blinked, and Curdle's image held, remained whole. She was suddenly [i]aware[/i], as though she had woken up. Somehow, she knew she was still dreaming, and somehow she knew this jinni was in her dreams, her thoughts. She didn't know how or why, but it sent chills down her spine, followed by the mortifying realization that he had witnessed very intimate moments of her subconscious.

"Y-you didn't..." A shaking hand flew to Miria's mouth. Unable to look him in the eye, she sank back down to sit, struggling not to think too much about what he had seen and what he had interpreted from the scene. His words, which felt like they were spoken so long ago, now tumbled in her thoughts; it was a wonder she could make sense of them at all. He was sorry, this was a mistake, he needed help....

"I still have your urn," she murmured, assuming that this was what the jinni needed help with. "I plan to rid myself of it."

Her gaze flickered up to him as a new question pressed against her tongue. "Are you dead?" How else would he be here in her dreams like this? Why else would he never come to claim his urn? She knew very little about the spiritual customs of the jinn; Tamal had always been so tight-lipped about such things. Now she had the sneaking suspicion that this jinni was a ghost haunting her dreams.