Author's Note: Inspired by American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, as well as the mystery religions portion of my Latin Tradition course. Written for .com/profile and within that peculiar multiverse, but you don't need to know anything about it to understand the story.
Also, I'm weirdly fixated on calling him Malik and not Marik, so... sorry about that.
...
..
The bar was cold and quiet, mostly empty. It was dark outside - that soft darkness that hints at what time it really is, so close to false dawn. Malik tilted his cup, watching the tea swirl lazily. It was cold, as well.
Malik lifted his eyes to watch Riff, wiping down the counter at the bar. There had been people, earlier. Cain and Otogi, with their eyes and their hands and their warmth. Others - friends. Even The Lady.
He found it amusing, calling her that. She had seemed amused by it, as well, but that might have been the champagne she was drinking. And her smile had been so much brighter when he had greeted her as Lady Hargreaves and said he was glad to see her and meant it.
He took a sip of his tea before remembering that it hadn't gotten any warmer. He didn't feel like bothering Riff for more. He could deal.
The mirror behind the bar was empty except for them, and he focused on that absently, until something about the room in the mirror and the room he was in contrasted too heavily, and he knew something was different.
The man - if he could be called a man, which Malik was going to call him regardless - moved like he would imagine a ghost did, slow and liquid across the floor. Only when Malik looked at him head on, he looked normal. He had a faded tan over coffee-colored skin, dark hair cropped close to his head. His eyes were black.
He asked for wine at the counter, but made a face when he drank it. Then he drifted over to sit at Malik's table right in front of him, obscuring the mirror he wasn't in.
Out of the corner of his eye, Malik could see the thin wrappings that enshrouded his body, the green tinge to pale-as-death skin, the crook and the flail in his hands.
"...thank you."
"For what?"
"You left irep and heset at my statue."
Lavender eyes unfocused and Malik watched as Osiris, god of the dead, drank the wine that did not taste like wine from Kemet with distaste.
"I do that every year."
"But this year, you left them for me."
He had. He had put the wine and the grain and figs in front of the statue like every other year, but this year he had thought of the gods, and he had believed that Osiris would take the ka from the food. It had been a strange feeling.
"...why are you talking to me?"
"I have missed the old days. All the dead of Kemet came to me, and there were rites in my temples every night, and festivals in my honor, and offerings at the feet of every statue, from people who believed..."
Malik believed. Not because he'd seen him, but because of other things. Colors in the night. Dreams out on the endless desert. Little things, little details, little changes in life's flow. He believed.
"...I can't promise you anything, you know."
"It's enough that you believe. I was beginning to think I would be forgotten, like so many others."
Rishid believed as well, he thought. Isis didn't. Maybe two was enough. If she had children, he'd teach them everything. He'd show them the gods.
He wouldn't make them take his burden, though. That would die with him.
"...you should go. It's late. Or early. Or something. People will be here soon."
"Thank you, Malik."
"...you're welcome. I-"
"I'll see you next year. Find some irep, hm? This stuff is a poor excuse."
Malik grinned, and would have answered, but the man who may have been a god was gone.