Prologue

A/N: New story, can't help myself. It's a bit different from my other stories but I just couldn't stop thinking about it. There are not enough egyptian sasusaku fanfics out there anyway. Enjoy the short prologue! (and let me know if you like it).

Edit: Visit chapter 1 for notes on my absence.


Sacred

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Her bare, dirty feet carry her toward a golden-basked path she knows too well. Silver, delicate bracelets adorning her wrists and ankles jiggle as she walks on the road; the white linen of her tunics moves with new waves of heat. She greets everyone she encounters by, and they greet her back.

The steps ahead of her are pure stone and yellow paint, higher from the ground as further as her vision travels from below her feet. The air around her is dry and hot, and the sky above her is cloud-less. It is no anomaly; it is a normal day.

She takes the required steps up the sun-stroked path, each and every one lighter than the previous one, and stops right in front of a set of invisible gates—tall arches that extend to the sky, reaching the gods with unabashed glory. Glancing to her left, she places her hands on a basin next to one of the arches, and purifies herself in the warm water, like every morning since she remembers being protected by a high-up, godly decorated ceiling.

She enters the temple, and she sets out to clean the inside walls with a warm cloth. A small voice sounds next to her.

"A message for you, Chantress."

She stops making the bottom of the wall shine, a job she tries to perform everyday at the earliest of hours, and looks at Hinata—all makeup and young beauty—in the heat of Egypt. Sakura doesn't have time to acknowledge her with a nod, but instead of finding it rude (for the next words come out before her own), she has no regrets for the interruption by the end of the unexpected announcement.

"I must say, a guard has notified me on my way here, and left before I could ask for anything else." Her voice is quiet, though it does not quiver.

Sakura waits; thus she waits for it, because she has a feeling in the pit of her stomach. She slowly stands up, walks the stoned floor toward the young woman a few steps ahead of her, and stops, almost biting her lip at the look Hinata gives her—and she knows what the message is about before she even explains, but she listens to it all the same.

"The General has expressed to let you know that he's arrived safely to the city," Sakura holds her breath, eyes widening at the statement, "and that he'll be in the palace for the day." She finishes with a polite smile and resumes to her duties in the third room of the temple, down a hallway and saved only for statues.

Sakura's hand shakes slightly—it had been so long, too long. A month. Was it two? Maybe three, even, if she lets her mind trick itself—when she's scrubbing the dirt off the face of a sculpture of Isis, the goddess of this temple, and she shakes her trembles away as soon as she takes notice.

Sasuke has returned.