So, so, so sorry for not updating for so long! Just that for some reason, all my meagre skills at writing suddenly disappeared. Every paragraph I tried to do came out wrong, or the sentence structure was weird, or the tense was wrong, etc. (I'm serious-it's not the rant of a self nit-picker.) Then writer's block set in for awhile-gah!

Please try and forgive the mistakes in this chapter. I'm typing this up when I can barely see the words straight anymore, five hours of sleep for six nights is taking its toll (can't stand consecutive late nights, as you can tell)…but if I don't get this done now; it won't come out for another two weeks. Also, this chapter is a lot shorter than the previous two because of the aforementioned writer's block-I couldn't think of any other way to improve the chapter. If you have a suggestion, please mention it.

Big thanks to mwaetht, Koragirl, The Duelist's Heiress and Shadowrunner240 for the reviews-you people don't know how relieved I am that you all liked last chapter to some degree.


"Why am I doing this again?" Efrona tried to creep away, but was caught by Jumoke around the waist. He hauled her back and kept his grip around her firm as she struggled.

"You're not even dancing-you're only singing. Relax!" he exclaimed, exasperated.

"Easy for you to say! You're not performing at all," Efrona shot back. She tugged at the midnight blue overcoat she wore, so much like what Belldandy wore thousands of years ago. She had found out the design actually came from the original.

"One of my lady ancestors, who lived around the time of Pharaoh Narmer, found a strange set of clothes by the Nile," Amun had told her in answer to a curious question. "Just washed up on the bank. She liked the design, and used it for herself. Back then the tribe was very small. The women all wore the same things then, as well as now. Eventually the garment design of those strange set of clothes became the traditional one used for females in this tribe."

Did Belldandy's body just vanish, leaving her clothes back in the Nile or something, when she fell into Egypt?! Efrona wasn't sure if she really wanted the answer to that…

Jumoke let go of her waist and grabbed her hands instead, stopping them from fiddling with anything else. "I don't understand why you're nervous. You sing often enough to the children, this will be the same thing, except there will be dancers and adults watching."

"You want reasons?" Efrona huffed. She held up a finger. "Firstly, children are an easier audience, and they listened to me to pass boredom. Secondly, this is the first performance I've been included into as part of this tribe, and I don't want to ruin it by singing horribly. Thirdly, plants will sprout! It's-it's-embarrassing!" Efrona folded her arms and looked away, embarrassed. She looked more like a teenager of sixteen at that moment then she ever had so far into her sixteenth year. This actually wasn't very long, if she thought about it.

Jumoke chuckled and ruffled his newest friend's hair. She glared at him, but didn't have the heart to do anything more vicious. He had this way with people-along with being able to read people's expressions uncannily well, he had a sort of natural charisma-an easy-going, frank demeanour that made the people around him relax. He was the type of person who found it easy to make friends and gain trust. Efrona was no exception to this. This was why she appreciated his company so much. It made her forget, temporarily the problems haunting her mind.

Problems which included possibly altering history if she did something stupid or brought attention to herself, and worries that included the question of when the hell she was going back to her own time?!

A hand fell lightly on her shoulder. Efrona jumped, and turned to see Layla's amused face.

"Nervous? Don't worry, you'll be fine. You can't make any mistakes anyway, you just follow instinct. You and the dancers are in this together-they dance with their bodies, and you with your voice. You're not alone, see? And if you really think there are such things as mistakes in instinctive singing, then look at it this way-the dancers will cover for you and improvise to go along with you. You'll have to do them the same favour, of course."

"There are no favours," Efrona frowned. "That's courtesy. If I didn't help I would be a selfish bi…" Hastily Efrona cut off the swear word, knowing Layla disapproved their use. She coughed, and swallowed the word back down, pointedly ignoring Jumoke's laughter in the background.

Layla's expression was a mixture of disapproval and satisfaction. "Now that you've controlled your mouth…you'd better go down with the other performers dear. Jumoke can take you to them. Just remember-you're not alone, and have fun, Water Lark!"

Jumoke dragged Efrona away. Efrona let herself be pulled along, mouthing the words 'fun', 'singing', 'plants' and 'crowd' as well as her latest nickname with a bewildered expression.

There was a large fire, similar to a camp fire. Twirling, colourful dancers and darting, leaping shadows on the ground. There were musicians, playing away at their instruments. There was an audience of spellbound adults and children, watching and joining in the entertainment merrily.

Then there was Efrona, who endured the suspicious glares she received from the villagers for being a pale skinned person. As soon as she opened her mouth, they forgot about her appearance-she took them somewhere outside the village with merely her voice, showing them the Egypt the goddess Isis saw on her journey to collect the dismembered parts of her husband Osiris.

An Egypt which hosted the gods, a place in turmoil over the raging war between Osiris and Set. Animals, curiously like Shadow monsters, roaming freely in their eeriness and magnificence, dragons wheeling through the sky. She painted pictures of lotus flowers as large as people's heads, in colours other than blue or white-when odd, non-existent things in normality existed during the reign of the gods. And as she sung, lotus flowers bloomed around her, reaching to people. Some were even cautiously plucked by daring women, who wore it in their hair. Only blue or white ones, but the miracle of suddenly blooming lotus flowers stunned the audience. It was only because of the great trust in the water tribe, which had been a traditional visitor every summer to that village, that Efrona was accepted as a person equal to an Egyptian. Efrona ignored the snide ones who were too prejudiced to try and accept her.

After she had finished the song she was assigned, Efrona was besieged with children of both the water tribe and the village, who grinned at her and called her 'Water Lark'. (What a mouthful.) The name spread through the village audience and was remembered-even if Efrona was a pale-skinned person with a Hebrew name (Hebrews at the time not exactly…approved of), she had managed to impress her audience.

Efrona had developed a second mask, Jumoke thought. Then he realised that no, she had not. The expression she wore as she sung-the warm, fond yet melancholic glint barely discernable in eyes that bordered between blue and grey showed how she truly felt as she sang.

Singing made her homesick, but she enjoyed it too.

The paradox confused Jumoke, and he filed the information away into the special part of his mind he had reserved for his new friend.

The entertainment her tribe put up after the first initial performance of dancers and singers for the villagers was loud, noisy and colourful. People laughed and bustled about, and traders haggled over items. Jumoke himself traded some wood carvings he had admitted to making himself for a few knick-knacks. Children wove in and out of the crowd (and some followed Efrona-why did children seem so fond of her? Not that she didn't like them) and the smell of food scented the air. The atmosphere was merry, happy, and the emotions were infectious.

Unfortunately, Efrona was immune to them at that point in time. Her singing performance, though it had drawn in a lot of attention for her tribe (a good thing in terms of trade), had put her off the good mood. Only Jumoke, who read people so well and had been her guide for the past few weeks, noticed the emotion beneath the smiling, polite façade Efrona had hidden behind during the rest of the revelry. The façade he had disliked at first, and was quickly learning to despise.

That façade hurt her. She made herself isolated with that mask, polite and cheery but no one around her really knew how she felt. The façade, though it cheered and reassured others, made her lonely, and it made her deal with her emotions alone. Unacceptable for a friend to watch. Jumoke couldn't do anything about it though-by the time he noticed, Efrona had isolated herself from the throng of villagers and tribe members alike, and vanished.

If Efrona had realised that Jumoke noticed her cheery mask was back in place, she would have been too ashamed to look him in the eye ever again. But she desperately needed that mask-needed it, so she could isolate herself from others and deal with herself-with the overwhelming wave of homesickness she felt with not being in her own time. After all, all she had been thriving on for the past few years, ever since she was twelve, was memories. They-especially the good ones-were what kept her going through each day, what made her survive after she had her spirit broken once.

Being out of her own time, she felt so far away from her memories. Distance from bad memories was good-but she wanted to be close to her good memories. She was afraid of them just one day…fading, vanishing as the dazzling sunlight of the Egyptian sun faded when night came. Except while the sunlight would return, her good memories would not. The bad memories she couldn't care less about…right?

Then again, without her turbulent past, she would never have changed from being the brat she considered herself to be at twelve, and never would have met Yugi and his friends. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, she still had yet to decide on.

Heh-who was she kidding? She was human-she wanted good things without the bad side. She wanted her good memories without feeling homesick, and she didn't want the bad memories that had traumatised and scarred her but at the same time made her character stronger.

Worst of all-she knew she was selfish, and a coward. She was hiding behind her mask once again, in an attempt to deal with her fluctuating emotions-damn, she was weak; she couldn't even control them! Stronger character, yeah right-she kept pretending she had changed for the better. She hadn't.

Why didn't Jumoke hate her yet? She was what he hated-a hypocrite, and a pretender.


It started off as a passing idea. Then a suspicion. Now, almost a certainty.

"Jumoke?" Efrona asked hesitantly. Jumoke, sitting straight back, silent and strangely moody on his horse, glanced at her. "Is…is Egypt in drought?"

For several weeks, the water tribe had been moving from town to town and entertaining, always following the path of a branch of the Nile River. During those travels, Efrona had gradually learnt how to compare water levels of certain branches of the Nile River with others. She had observed that some were far lower than others, and though she wasn't sure if it was originally like that or not, she couldn't help but ask.

The dying and yellow crops on farms that they had passed had also been an indicator of possible drought.

Jumoke nodded at her question, confirming her suspicions. The moodiness became more apparent in his eyes as he explained. "Yes, Egypt is in a severe drought right now. The last Nile floodings were very poor, and some branches of the Nile were not replenished by much, some none at all. Some branches have already died out-and many people have suffered for it. Farmers' crops have failed, and food production is poor. Not just food production-everything has been affected. Villages along smaller branches of the Nile that still run might have to move, or risk their parts of the river drying up."

Efrona stared. She was aware that there were times in ancient Egypt when droughts affected the nation, dealing the country heavy blows that took a while to recover from. She just hadn't thought such a thing happened during the Pha-during Atem's rule. Between Shadow Games and any other trouble he had encountered during his rule (how long had he ruled for anyway?), how had he coped with a drought, a natural disaster, of all problems?

That was-if Atem was ruling during this time. Efrona wasn't sure. She hadn't asked anyone, for fear of being thought any odder than she already was. After all, he was the King of Egypt, and anyone who did not know who the current king of Egypt was, was a fool, or from very far away. Blue eyes, pale skin and the modern clothes she wore when she was first brought, unconscious, to the water tribe hadn't helped her to stay inconspicuous amongst the tribe people.

"Egypt suffers many problems," Efrona mused, feeling sorry for the country. It wasn't an easy place to survive. Yet Egypt flourished as one of the most powerful nations during the ancient era.

She jumped when Jumoke suddenly let out a hiss of frustration. He slammed his fist into his hand, and then groaned, covering his face with one hand. Had he not been holding the reins of his horse with one hand, he would probably have covered his face with both hands.

"How can you be so calm?" he mumbled. "I thought, at first, it might be because you had no idea of the situation in Egypt-how truly bad it was, despite our travels of the past few weeks. How much the people were actually suffering. But now, when you most definitely know…how can you sound so calm about people suffering? How can you be so calm, when you know you have some sort of magic ability, but still, even then, cannot help anyone?" bitterness laced his tone.

Ah, there lay the cause of Jumoke's moodiness.

"You…you have some sort of water ability, don't you Jumoke?" Efrona asked gently. "As well as your uncle, Amun." Jumoke nodded.

"My uncle can summon our esteemed water god, Hapi, through the water. It is an ability given to tribe leaders when they are initiated, just like all children of the tribe leader will have some sort of Shadow Magic related to water. My father, besides being able to use Shadow Magic and water as a summons, can also take a small glimpse at a person's past."

The wide-eyed, almost panicky look in Efrona's eyes made Jumoke frown and backtrack quickly.

"Don't look so scared!" he reassured. "It is nothing precise. The Shadows show my uncle colours in the water, and each colour is a different emotion that the person he is looking up has felt. Then the shade of it determines the strength of the emotion."

"Did he try to find out about me this way?" Efrona asked quietly. Jumoke didn't look at her in the eye, giving her an answer.

"Don't blame him," he said. "It was just after you were found, before you woke up. He was being very cautious, because you could not be questioned, nor judged by honourable Hapi, while unconscious."

"What colours did he see?"

Jumoke swallowed. "He couldn't make one out," he said finally. "He said that there were a myriad of colours, whirling, twisting and moving, but they never stayed still long enough for him to study them-they kept moving. To put it simply, you've had a turbulent past."

"Was there any black?" Black, for hatred. Jumoke hesitated again.

"My Uncle thought he saw a spot," he finally replied. "It might not have been there, or it could have just been a very dark shade of brown or blue," he tried to soothe. Efrona chuckled bitterly, startling him.

"No, if there was black there, then for good reason. Let's get off the subject of my history, it's getting gloomy. What's your ability?"

Jumoke accepted the subject change, carefully filing away the bitterness he had heard from the girl for later inspection. Another facet of her nature, the facet that was stained and scarred. It intrigued him; all of her intrigued him, like a gem he couldn't look away from. Such was the strength of his fascination.

First and foremost though, he was her friend. He would not press about subjects she was not ready to speak about yet.

"My ability is to see the present through water-I call it scrying. Through the water, I can ask the Shadows to seek a specific person out and observe them. Thus I can watch people from over long distances."

"Stalker," Efrona teased. Jumoke looked affronted.

"I may be blunt, a little nosy, boisterous, loud, and I may unnerve people with my ability to read their true expressions, but I'm not a pervert. You should be thankful for that, Efrona."

"I feel sorry for the girl who will one day be…how you say it formally…the object of your affections," Efrona commented dryly.

Jumoke refrained from saying that he didn't have any, because at the moment she was his current fascination. Affection and fascination were NOT the same, by the way. He hoped.

"Come on, I've told you my uncle's and my abilities," he urged. "What's yours?"

Efrona cast a thoughtful glance at the low river she and the whole tribe were horse riding at easy speed along. Then she looked ahead, in the direction the distant town they were heading towards. She pursed her lips.

There were so many reasons why she did not want to tell anyone of her ability. She did a mental checklist on the reasons why she was reluctant to tell anyone about her magical abilities. It went something like this:

She'd been keeping her abilities a secret for four years already, ever since she discovered them. Yugi and his gang she had owed an explanation to, so they were the exception to this. Hold on, she owed a large debt to this water tribe, and Jumoke had told about his and Amun's abilities….there went the validity of this reason.

Telling Jumoke her ability to control water specifically would acknowledge that she could in some way help Egypt. She wasn't meant to be in this ancient time-what if she interfered, and messed up the timeline somehow? Or changed something important? She could accidentally save a village that was meant to die out or something…that actually wasn't a bad thing, but what if there were bad consequences to it? (Like what? She wanted to ask herself.) She could help, but also create more problems accidentally…somehow.

If the water tribe asked her to help Egypt, she would not refuse. She owed them, after all. And this water tribe had a kind heart-saving one or two villages wouldn't do. Then she would have to help the whole country, not just one town. She would become conspicuous, and a figure talked about by the nation. She would rather go back to her own time soon, leaving as little trace of herself behind as possible. Why hadn't she been sent home yet anyway? Not that she had done anything particularly helpful so far…

Why did her checklist seem pathetic? So…whiny?

Efrona thought of people suffering, and her looking on whilst knowing she could possibly help them. Possibly, but never even tried. That was just cruel though! She shouldn't hog her own powers. Selfish, her conscience whispered. She was being selfish and whiny, making up excuses to both why she didn't want to tell anyone her powers, and for not wanting to help where she could.

Coward. She hadn't changed. That was what spurred her forward.

"You asked me before how I could be so calm about Egypt's suffering," Efrona stated slowly. "To tell the truth, I was thinking…one of my abilities might, might, be of use. I need to talk to you and your uncle-there are some things you should know before you get all hopeful. Don't look at me like that!"

Jumoke was giving her a huge grin. "I don't care if you really had a spot of black in the colour history uncle saw. You're still a kind person, with the will to help others."

His words made Efrona uncomfortable, because just a few moments ago she had been hesitating on telling him anything, hesitating in helping his country. Almost considered just letting others suffer when she could help. It made her guilty-it made her conscience squirm like a worm.

And it made her want to try hard, as hard as she could, to help.


It took a long time to explain to Amun and Jumoke Efrona's power over water, and it wasn't because it was overly difficult to understand. Uncle and nephew were profoundly curious of her powers, and Efrona had trouble redirecting their conversation from touchy areas. Thankfully, Amun and Jumoke were tactful, and noticed when they hit uncomfortable topics. They steered away from those topics quickly.

So many questions, some almost unrelated to the actual topic of helping Egypt. What were her powers, if they weren't Shadow Magic? Was her water power, as well as others, born into her, or was it her bracelet that generated her magic? Did her wolf necklace do anything? What was 'ice'? Of those questions, the last question was the only one Efrona would give a straight and simple answer to.

Amun was never one to be truly side-tracked from matters at hand though. Eventually, he linked his fingers together and looked at Efrona probingly. "We the water tribe, as we are the only ones who know of your power, would like to ask for your assistance in surviving this drought, and helping the country and its people. I'm sure you are now aware of Egypt's current problems, due to the poor floodings last summer. I ask now-will you be willing to help?"

Efrona was ready with an answer. On the way to Amun's tent, accompanied by a quiet by hopeful Jumoke, Efrona had carefully thought of an answer that would compromise between what Amun and Jumoke (currently only those two) wanted her to do, and also resolve most of the issues she had in mind with telling them of her magical abilities, and helping Egypt.

"I will help-my conscience won't allow me to turn away from this problem. However, I have a few conditions…"


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