Of Spice and Wisdom

The desert sun beat down on the burnished gold of her chariot, a relentless heat that mirrored the flames that danced in Queen Makeda’s eyes. She was not born to rule, but fate, a fickle serpent, had coiled itself around her destiny the day her father, the Lion of Sheba, breathed his last. Now, at the tender age of eighteen, the spice-scented winds of her kingdom whipped through her raven hair as she surveyed her domain.
Makeda, a woman forged in the fires of grief and tempered by the iron will of her advisors, knew a journey loomed. Not a conquest, but a gamble. The whispers spoke of a king in a faraway land, a king whose wisdom was as vast as the deserts, a king named Solomon. And so, with the weight of a teetering kingdom on her shoulders and the blood of a lioness in her veins, Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, embarked on a voyage that would etch her name into legend.