(KAI) Let's talk about names:
Japanese-Egyptian:
Ryou: Miu-Sher (pronounced 'mew-share'), "little kitten."
Because I love how it sounds.
Bakura: Nakhti ('nah-k-ti'), couldn't find a meaning.
Because of a fan-art site that mislead me. The name just stuck.
Yugi: Ini-heret ('inni-heh-ret'), "one who brings back the distant one."
Because it suits him in the story's plot. And I like it.
Yami: Ahmose ('ah-mo-seh'), couldn't find a meaning.
Because Ahmose the Great was grand, and because of that fan-art site. I know it's Atemu, really.
Malik: Namu ('nah-muu'), couldn't find a meaning.
Because that's what Malik called himself.
Ishtar: n/a ('ish-tarr'), couldn't find a meaning.
Because it was more attractive than 'Marik'.
Isis: n/a ('eye-ssis'), "supreme goddess."
Because that's her name.
Rashid: Odion. ('rah-sheed'), "wise advisor."
Because it worked out very well that way.
Who I Am
7
It is sunrise. Nakhti is smoking blue incense through his room as silently as the light spreading through Kemet. "Ah, he awakens," the aide says softly to Miu-sher, who sits up and blushes. Nakhti has been with him for six months, a shorter time than many of the priests and priestesses with whom he is familiar, and who take care of him, but he feels so close to the assistant, so comfortable, and yet shy. The sun moves through the room slowly, teasing the curtains to cast pale across Nakhti's nude upper body. Miu-sher blushes more deeply, pulling at the cloth of his white dressings.
"I had a dream last night..."
"Oh?" Nakhti lights a new incense and mounts it in a wall sconce, fighting the urge to cough. He has wondered why the boy is subject to so much smoke, and has determined it may be to keep him in some sort of stupor, perhaps closer to the vision of his third eye. Still, he wonders on occasion, what the boy's voice would be like, how sweet it may sound, if not ravaged by a lifetime of smoke and incense. The soft rasp, lungs threatening to collapse, is so kind, though, and Nakhti cannot help but be piteous of him. Affectionate.
"The king is in the bath... the boy from the oasis is washing his back. There's a cat on a statue of Hathor," Miu-sher pauses, recollecting the next phase of his dream, "Then I saw... I saw a priest, and he was hunting the streets. There was so much dust."
Nakhti halts in his washing of the room, a daily chore which serves nearly no purpose, save that it gives him excuse to see dear Miu-sher, when he wakes. When he smiles. Now, Miu-sher is not smiling, nor is the sweet pinkpale blush that so often spreads visible. Miu-sher is staring intently into the folds of his sheer robes, as it pools in his lap, the soft, expensive cotton like the folds of time. "I-I think he is hunting people."
"Shall I make of this a note? Is this prophecy?" For the aide must be a scribe as well as a maid, and an errand slave, and still more. Nakhti wrings his hands in the kilted dressing, knotted at the waist and good for scrubbing, and waits for Miu-sher to nod, to close his eyes to remember. Miu-sher knows much of blindness.
As the aide leaves for his inks and papyrus, the delicate oracle frowns, and touches his own cheek. Under the eyes and down, where Nakhti's scar is, where it is twice crossed, where Miu-sher has never touched. And then his companion returns, sits, and waits. He has learned incredible patience from the boy who reclines in the straw mat, on its low wooden frame; who will speak and then not speak, for sticks at a time. Burning, burning, they go, and Nakhti must have patience, waiting for the oracle's dreams to collect together, like droplets.
Nakhti is glad, then, that he is in charge only of taking down the boy's dreams, and not his trances in the little stone building, in the courtyard, facing the east, all scattered with yellow dry-flowers. Isis is one of the few people he admires...
"A blue-eyed priest on beast's back... he takes prisoners from little towns, from cities near him, and returns with them... to... the king's property," Miu-sher seems to consider this for a time, long after Nakhti has stopped scratching characters to paper, "And then... he removes their souls."
Nakhti's heart freezes in his chest, though it still beats, and he does not choke or appear disturbed as he repeats, "Their souls?"
"No... their spirits. Ka," Miu-sher says again, thinking it a better word, "And the Ka go in stones, and the stones are... for the king, but the king... I see him..."
Ten minutes later, Miu-sher whispers, "The king says, 'no'..."
Nakhti frowns deeply, writing- this is the dreaming he has waited for. Tales of the Ka sealings had stretched far and wide, and to his village, little more than half a year ago. They had been sparse, but now... The white oracle of Kemet, had prophesied the Theban priest Seth on a man-hunt. Nakhti watched Miu-sher lean against the wall, gathering the few thoughts he had left. What a sweet child, who knew so little and saw so much. What did he know even of the man who watched him dream at night?
The man whose life had been stolen by Seth's ambitions; by a raid on Kul Elna, brought burning to the ground in search of the Kas. Irony that he alone was possessed of one, and he alone had survived.
"He is looking for Kas which are... Gods," Miu-sher's eyes went wide, "Oh, he'll kill someone! I see him now!"
And Miu-sher is breathing heavily now, is vacant of expression as his hands clamp over his ears, "A boy, Ptah! Nakhti, Nakhti!"
It was a shriek for help, and even as Nakhti is stumbling over his flying thoughts, trying to organize in 'god Kas', a 'boy', and the great creator god 'Ptah', he is struggling to his feet, crashing into the bedside, and roughly grasping Miu-sher to him, tightly. Miu-sher shakes his head, whimpers and cries, and presses his head beneath Nakhti's chin, where there is some safety from himself. Some safety from the endless barrage of images, from the never-ending tirade of other people, other journeys, other memories.
"Nakhti," he moans, tears rolling in fat drops down his round, baby cheeks, "make it stop... please make it stop...!"
"I can't," the white-haired assistant mumbles gruffly, rubbing his palm into the back of Miu-sher's dressing, because he hates to and because he will. "Stop crying, Miu-sher," he says into pale hair, because he hates the tears and because he can't stop them.
"Th-there is more, Nakhti," the boy whispers tearfully, his mind showing him what he does not wish to see, "A man in a red cloak... he- he...he's going to kill the priest!"
Like a northern stream in winter, Nakhti froze.
He woke with a start, as though his blood had gone cold, and tears were tracking down his face at a startling pace. "Nakhti-!" he shouted, throwing his body forward in shock. Bakura caught him in rough hands; hands which were still unaccustomed to gentleness. "Ryou?"
He glared at Isis and Rashid, who watched the boy shudder and heave on the couch almost clinically. Rashid's expression softened, and he stood up. "I will bring him a cup of tea."
"God, fuck you," Bakura hissed between his teeth, his heart pounding too harshly for having heard the name Ryou had called to. Isis looked away, unable to keep her gaze level on the boy's suffering. Three months ago, during the shift, Ryou had been there for Malik, for the entire month before Ishtar was ripped apart from her little brother. Ryou was like an annex. A part of her own family. Yet the resentment and guilt were un-exorcisable from her; resentment to Ryou for failing them in this way, and guilt for feeling in such a way. And where was Malik now? Coloring like a four-year old upstairs. Quietly, she excused herself, and left the house. A deep breath of fresh air. That was all she needed. Just to not be in the same room as those cold, cold brown eyes Bakura flashed at her, merciless.
Yami stood up abruptly, as if he had been called, and he left the room with a look of concern and pain. Bakura watched him, hatred flaring, for reasons and for no reason. And then Ryou let out one long, shuddering breath and he could not hold on to his anger. The shift had changed a lot. In one motion, Bakura leapt over the back of the couch and slid behind Ryou's quivering back.
Without looking, Ryou murmured, "I don't want to go back, I don't want to know..."
Bakura pulled the boy back, wrapped his arms around him possessively. There hadn't been enough time; the shift had come and gone, and before the relationship Ryou had begun with him had time enough to move forward, Ishtar had become a threat. And Ryou had been so brave, Bakura pressed his face into the soft, albicant waves of Ryou's hair, and hurt to see how Ryou had been punished for that threat.
"I love you," he said as softly as he could, because he needed to say it out loud, and because Ryou was crying, and he hated the tears so much.
