The first thing that struck me about this story was what the bird kept flying in and telling the maiden: "Your fate is with a dead person." I'd love to do a short piece about a protagonist who's been told this since they were little and it was prophesied for them, who's grown up with that hanging over their head--and who's about to find out just what that means.
Then again, the bit at the end where the maiden finds the guy laying down with a note resting across his chest ("Whoever for forty days shall fan me and pray by me shall find their kismet") seems pretty fun to experiment with, too. At first glance, it gives off genderbent Sleeping Beauty vibes--but I think it could be more interesting if she manages to wake him up quickly and then they both have to work together to escape and find their way home.
This time around, I was intrigued by the deal the imp proposed to the woodcutter: the imp would "creep into" the Sultan's daughter, and the woodcutter would touch her face with a certain kind of leaf to signal for the imp to leave her, making it seem like the woodcutter had expelled him. It makes me want to write a story about a protagonist who has a similar deal with a minor demon, running cons and schemes together for money. I assume the protagonist would eventually make quite a name for himself in certain circles, in a John Constantine sort of way, and that would eventually draw the wrong kind of attention.
In this half of the story, it was the "most famous astrologers of the land" who caught my interest: the king called upon all of them to find a cure for his daughter, and they came in and "consulted the stars, and prescribed each a different medicine..." I think a story about a group of astronomers or magicians or wizards could be interesting, as a sort of convention/unofficial competition, probably from the perspective of the apprentice to one of them.
The only thing that really grabbed me in this story was the bit where the man protests that he doesn't have any time to study to become a soothsayer. The idea that you can learn to predict the future--that it's some skill that can just be picked up--is an interesting one, so if I were to use this story as inspiration, I would probably use that concept and have a protagonist who's trying to learn that kind of thing, but isn't very good at it. So when she sees a glimpse of some total, personal catastrophe in the future, she doesn't think much of it. Until she sees it again. And then the game quickly becomes about preventing that specific future and saving her dad, or whoever it is.
This was one of my favorite stories of the unit; I love the idea of a wizard and his apprentice transforming themselves into objects, selling each other at market, and then returning to human form and escaping once they've got the money from the sale. It makes me want to write a story about a roguish wizard who isn't much good at proper spellwork, but goes around conning people with his apprentice and some petty magic.
Bibliography: Forty-Four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.
Image Credit: Illustration from "Patience-Stone and Patience-Knife," by Willy Pogany. Source: Forty-Four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos.
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