#saam

Charles Culver (USA, 1908-1967)

Pelican with Gull on Head, n.d.

Watercolor, 16 x 23 5⁄8 in. (40.6 x 60.0 cm)

The Kogod Courtyard, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Untitled (Marine Fantasy with Tamara Toumanova), ca. 1940.

Collage and tempera on paperboard, 21 x 13 1⁄2 in.

Artist: Joseph Cornell

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault

When I was 23, I was sexually assaulted by a close friend during my suicide attempt. This happened 4 months after I had gotten out of a 2 year emotionally, physically & sexually abusive relationship with my ex. That time of my life was incredibly painful & I still haven’t fully healed from it all these years later. The unfortunate reality is that rapists & abusers often get to live their lives as normal while the survivor is left to pick up the broken pieces. This song is not about wanting actual harm to come to my rapist; but, a way to illustrate the violence done to me & how it affected me.

To anyone who has ever experienced sexual abuse or assault:

I want you to read this and truly feel it in your heart: none of what happened to you was your fault. Not ever. You did not ask for it. You did not deserve it. And it does not make you weak, broken, or unworthy. You are still whole. You are still deserving of love, respect, and safety always.

It’s okay to feel everything, or even nothing at all. Anger, sadness, fear, confusion, numbness every emotion is valid. Healing isn’t linear. It isn’t a checklist or a race. It’s a journey you move through at your own pace, and every step you take no matter how small, matters. You are allowed to pause, to breathe, to rest, and to protect yourself. You are allowed to set boundaries, even with the people you love. You are allowed to prioritize your well-being.

If you choose to share your story with someone, that takes immense courage. Trusting someone with your pain is an act of bravery, and it deserves to be met with care, empathy, and respect.

To those who are trusted with someone’s story:

Please, listen without interrupting. Believe them. Do not question or doubt their experience. Do not search for “proof” or place blame. Do not try to fix them, rush their healing, or offer unsolicited advice. Simply be present. Remind them it was not their fault. Respect their boundaries. Let them lead the conversation. Sometimes the most powerful words you can offer are: “I believe you,” and “I’m here for you.” Your presence, your listening, and your validation can help someone feel seen, supported, and less alone.

This month, let’s also remember that sexual violence is not just a private issue, it’s a public health and community concern. It’s a problem that requires awareness, education, and collective action. We all have a role in creating a culture where consent is respected, boundaries are honored, and harm is prevented before it occurs. By learning, speaking up, supporting survivors, and modeling care and respect, we can help make the world a safer place for everyone.

To survivors: your story matters. Your voice matters. Your life matters. You deserve to feel safe, valued, and supported. You are not alone. Healing may take time, but you have the right to live without shame, without fear, and without blame. You are enough, exactly as you are.

To allies: your actions matter. Your words matter. The way you respond can create a space of safety, compassion, and empowerment. Together, we can lift up survivors, prevent future harm, and foster a culture of empathy, respect, and consent.

To set the scene, let me direct you to this post by @innerchorus detailing how corrupt the priestly class in the capital exactly were. Though I will however also paste the relevant novel quote from that post here:

'Narses, you see, had also been investigating the priests’ abuse of their privileged positions to perpetrate sundry transgressions. Not only were the priests exempt from taxes, even if they were to commit a crime, they would not be arrested or executed. They lent money to the peasantry at exorbitant interest rates and seized their lands when the money could not be repaid. They also monopolized the underground kariz aqueducts and reservoirs, imposing a water tax on the people. If anyone resisted, they sent forth their personal troops to burn and pillage, and afterwards divvied up the spoils. The salt they sold to the public was cut with sand. If the peasantry dug their own wells, they poisoned the wells. After investigating and collecting proof of all these misdeeds, Narses requested that the king exact severe punishment upon the priests.' (Book 1, Chapter 2, part i)

Soooo. Pretty horrible, right?

So Arslan grew up in Verkāna, an incredibly private and tolerant region considered somewhat backwater and away from imperial scrutiny, enabling Shapur to do stuff like secretly free all the enslaved people in his castle in batches and integrating them into the local community and hiding a whole entire magic clan in his lands. This all started when Arslan was 4, it's been 10 years since, so this model of operations is pretty much the only one Arslan will remember.

Cue his culture shock when he came to the capital.

Feeling powerless and nauseated at the casual cruelty displayed everywhere, I think he and the other kiddos start going around healing people in secret (especially the enslaved who were given corporal punishment and left to deal with their injuries without any medical attention), conducting funerals for the downtrodden, even going around helping draw water into new wells with magic or creating antidotes to the poisons in the wells and distributing them on the down low.

Of course, none of this is... particularly sustainable. The enslaved are still being abused. People are still dying. The wells will keep being poisoned over and over again and it's just... not good. It doesn't really do away with the root problem, just... kinda deals with the symptoms. The kids know this, but... what more could they possibly do?

To make matters worse, Arslan gets caught. The Temple finds out that Arslan is an active participant and even the leader of the whole little... vigilante activity, shall we say.

The Temple is obviously not too pleased with Arslan, but they might not just want to off the boy— I don't know if his status as an illegitimate son of a marzbān will help shield him or not, they did send assassins after an entire Shahrdaran (particularly privileged feudal lords who were permitted to hold private armies!!!) aka Narsus (but then again Narsus would've been pretty unpopular among the ruling class soooooo hm), BUT they do recognize his high magic potential. Boy can communicate with the djinn no problem, his healing is potent, they don't have any reason to believe that he might be following another faith (though we in the fandom typically associate religious intolerance with Lusitanian Yaldabaothism, I will be basing Wolfsong's Parsian priestly class on the Sassanian variety, incredibly privileged and powerful, super fucking intolerant of other faiths, of course there's variation and some regions are more lax, but the Zoroastrian-inspired Khuda-Yasna as I've named it, it's the state religion of Pars, basically), they essentially want a piece of that cake. I've read about how some famous Fire Temples historically extolled their virtues and miracles in order to attract more pilgrims and such, so I have essentially grafted that attitude onto Arslan here. The priests want him and his magic so that they can exploit him for bullshit, essentially.

They start kinda “soft”. They approach Shapur (or invite him to the Grand Temple), they sit him down and they wax poetic about Arslan's talent and how that talent should be used to serve the gods properly instead of going rogue like this, becoming increasingly insistent as the conversation went on, they even insinuated that Isfān and Arslan might get into a succession feud (though Isfān and Arslan call each other brother, legally they're like, uncle and nephew) because Isfān is elder but born from a slave woman and not even sired by Shapur besides, Arslan was born to a commoner woman (as far as they could tell anyways) and actually sired by Shapur (LOL) so assuming that Isfān is Shapur's favored heir, wouldn't it be prudent to eliminate any any potential for Isfān's claim being challenged by a rival claimant aka Arslan? Just submit your child to the Temple and everything will be solved!

(Shapur is appropriately horrified and insulted by the insinuations and flat out denies their “request”)

I am like, kinda putting it down that Shapur and his troops arrived at Ecbatana maaaaybe a month and a half before the actual Battle of Atropatene, I still haven't figured out the timeline here BUT there's opportunity for a period of stand-off between Shapur and the Temple over custody over Arslan. It's a mess.

If the Battle of Atropatene and subsequent chaos didn't happen, it's likely that they would've escalated and forced the issue (maybe even forcing a trial of sorts since I remember reading that priests carried out judicial stuff during the Sassanian era? I'm not sure on this one though) and/or pressured Shapur and his Verkāna region eventually. For better or for worse, that didn't end up happening.

Instead, perhaps at Narsus' advice (if he's there, that is, which is likely?), Shapur entrusts Arslan into the care and protection of Sām, a fellow marzbān (capable fighter as well as political shield against... you'll see), for fear of the Temple just taking its changes at Shapur being absent from the capital for battle and snatching Arslan up.

Things were going okay-ish... until the disastrous battle and the subsequent siege.

As y'all know from canon, the Lusitanians promised to free the enslaved if they opened the city gates for them, leading to riots, Garshasp kills some of them and Sām tries to intervene in canon. But because Arslan would've been under Sām's protection... could he have been present at the scene also?

In any case though, Sām (as per novel canon) and Arslan (is Narsus with them? somebody help me) go to petition the Queen Tahamenay to free the enslaved to prevent. Y'know. The worst-case scenario.

Tahamenay refuses, reprimands Sām for encouraging a youth's naivete, and then decides to hand Arslan over to the Temple for good measure. Washing her hands of a problematic entity + hoping the Temple will “handle” him and use him to quell the riots maybe (the Temple could've been badgering the royal family w spiels of “the boy will be good for controlling the masses, promise!” even before the siege bc they wanted the royal family's backing to get control over Arslan) + and gaining favor from the priestly class for the future, so all in all feels like a solid decision, at least in her head.

Arslan is yoinked and held under house arrest with the Temple trying and failing to use him for propaganda (oops! it just made it worse) when the city is breached and sacked, and the rest is history as you all know what Arslan did after the Lusitanians got into the city.

All of this to provide a sense of unease and foreboding for the time leading up to the canon era chaos, like building up the tension for something we all know is inevitably coming! Like I said, I wanted to showcase Ecbatana for all its splendor and “prosperity” being a place so steeped in hurt and horror and oppression that its societal foundations and pillars are rotting, cracking, the same “cultural foundations” that the elite choose to preserve at all costs that's giving this city the feeling of imminent implosion! It's about to collapse under the weight of its own cruelty! Just like how the kiddie trio's solutions didn't feel sustainable there was no way this status quo was ever going to be sustainable. The blood has saturated to its maximum capacity. The rubber band is at its maximum stretch and tension. All it has left for it is to snap.