In the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the queen was waiting impatiently. She strode the floor, pacing back and forth, feeling her anxiety rising with each step she took. She’d been locked up for days under the king’s orders. Outside, she could hear construction. “By Gods, he’s at it again,” she said, picking up her cup of black tea and taking a shaky sip. Not that she didn’t love her husband; she did, he just had very … specific, expensive, and not always logical ideas about how to show his love. It’s how the Hanging Gardens were built in the first place. She asked for a garden at the palace, and he took it too many steps further, and began the process of building gardens that literally hang in the air, off the side of the palace, anywhere he could make it happen. This, of course, was not practical even though it was shaping up to be beautiful and wondrous beyond measure. She’d just wanted a quiet, lush green space to stroll through in the mornings before the day got too hot, and in the evenings to cool off. But her husband was flamboyant and ostentatious (he said that was his duty as the ruler, to show off his wealth, that it would make his subjects respect him), and as a lowly woman, she never got to second guess his decisions … to his face, at least. She was also supremely sensitive to noise, and the sound of construction for days on end was rattling her down to her last frayed nerve. She’d purposefully kept her windows shut to drown out some of the sound, but it wasn’t nearly as effective as she needed it to be.... Click here to read the rest of the story!
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