The White Horse of the King and His Beloved Consort

  

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The evening wind slipped through the carved windows of the royal chamber. 

The sky above the palace of Gendara turned to bronze, casting golden light upon the royal courtyard where noble steeds grazed. Among them stood a white horse—no ordinary white, but a shade kissed by moonlight and untouched by dust.

Her name was Nadara, the most cherished horse in the kingdom. But she did not belong to the King. 

Nadara was the prized possession of Mayara, the royal consort whom the King had married in secret—not for love that blossomed over time, but for desire sparked in solitude.

King Wiryandaru was a man of power, draped in flowing robes and sharp gazes. In the great halls, his voice echoed like thunder. But before Mayara, he was a boy again, crafting sweet lines like a bard desperate to be heard.

And Mayara… oh, Mayara. Her beauty was otherworldly. She arrived from a distant land, her voice soft like silk, yet laced with quiet cruelty. 

The King fell for her instantly—before his heart had a chance to ask why. They wed without ceremony, in silence, witnessed only by two scribes and a god who said nothing.

One month later, as a gesture of devotion, the King gifted her a magnificent white horse, Nadara, brought from a cold valley untouched by man.

"That you may never feel alone while I tend to the kingdom," he said, hopeful.

Mayara named the horse but never rode her. 

She admired the jewels on the saddle more than the horse itself. She laughed often, not with the King, but with young merchants in rose gardens while the King led wars or governed councils.

The palace staff began to whisper. They spoke of distant voices in the consort's chambers at night. Of shadows slipping through back windows beneath broken moons.

The King heard nothing—or pretended not to. He chose to bathe Nadara himself, speaking to her gently, as one would speak to a wife who never listened.

Then came the storm.

One rainy night, Mayara vanished. Her chamber lay empty, the finest jewels gone. On the table, a letter lay like a wound:

"You are a great king, but never a man. I cannot love someone who tries to buy my heart with saddles and stones."

The King said nothing. No soldiers were sent. No curses uttered. No tears shed.

Instead, he sat by Nadara’s stall. That night, the white horse looked at him long and quietly—with eyes wet like a mirror of his soul.

The next morning, Nadara was found lying beneath an old banyan tree in the rear garden. She refused to eat, drink, or return to the world. Two days later, she took her final breath in silence—like a woman slowly dying from a love that never came.

King Wiryandaru ordered Nadara to be buried in the courtyard where Mayara once basked in the sun. That place, now abandoned and still.

He never took another wife.

He never spoke of Mayara again.

But every dusk, he sat by Nadara’s grave in wordless vigil. And they say, if you pass near that garden under a full moon, you may hear the soft neigh of a horse and the voice of a man—not calling out for his beloved,

but for the heart he had lost.