Ylajali

She first exists only as a name he gives her — Ylajali — a word he repeats like a charm, conjuring palaces of amethyst and ruby where she waits on a throne of yellow roses. When they finally meet, she is real and strange and slightly amused, and the gap between his fantasy and her actual presence becomes almost unbearable. She matters because she is the one thing his hunger cannot consume: a desire that outlives bread, and the measure of how far his mind has already traveled from the world.