Silver Lily: La, la, la, hear we are!
Jade: Chapter seven. Oh joy, oh rapture. . .
Silver Lily: Sarcastic yamis. Any way, hope that you like, please R&R!
Sunstone
* * * * * * * * * *
We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams. And yet, we are the movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Greek sighed, pacing vigorously back and forth in his chambers. Golden sunlight streamed through the ever open windows, sand adorning the neglected tables.
"Lover, what is the matter? You've been rather aloof lately. Tell me what's wrong?" Selene sat on their bed, starring worriedly at her better half.
"Something is wrong, beloved. A shadow has been hanging over my head for the past three days, foreboding something I don't even want to guess at."
He kept walking back and forth, hands clutched behind him. Selene sighed. He had been at this for two hours now.
"I just feel so helpless. I know something is wrong, but I don't even know what or how I can fix it!"
Words, words of comfort. That was what he needed right now. Someone that could sympathize with him. He was never in the position of where he couldn't do a damned thing, and that is what drove him nuts.
"Has anyone else felt this?"
"No, just growing suspicion of their enemies. No, this. . . this is something that I'm _feeling_ deep down inside. It's gnawing at my very insides, and I don't know what to do."
"The Mesore should help to relax you. After nightfall I will dance for the city. You always say that my dance comforts you."
He sighed exasperated. "I hope you're right, lover. I hope you're right."
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Ready?" The pharaoh of Thebes stood in the empty hall, awaiting his closest advisors.
"Ready, my lord," Selene replied, pulling behind her a disgruntled looking Greek. "Lover, you know that I don't like the sacrifice," he whined.
"Most of us don't, silly Greek. But it's tradition, and all of us have to be there," Kekeweht replied.
Aeyeta groaned. "That poor bird! If I controlled the wind element, I'd be tempted to blow it away to safety."
"The priests would have a fit if you did that," Selene said.
Yuugi stood warily next to Yu Gi Oh, not liking the idea of the yearly sacrifice to Horus to ensure a good crop. The pharaoh promised that it would get better after that, but the slave was still skeptical.
"This way," Tekutet motioned. "To the front of the palace."
It was almost like walking to your own eulogy, Selene always thought. To stand out in the middle of the scorching desert sun, sweat pouring down your face and sand blowing into your eyes. No one really wanted to go, but it was tradition. And it was considered polite. A beautiful creature screeching into its death. She hated it. Completely and totally hated it.
Yu Gi Oh had become immune to such things when he was younger, as did the other native Egyptians.
Seth seemed to actually thrive in such activities. A mad grin smothered on his too perfect face. Beauty always was a deceitful thing.
The whole of Thebes, and even commoners and aristocrats from neighboring villages were gathered outside the palace wall, starring expectantly at the front of the alter of the high preist, and a small table covered in old, crusted blood.
The pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt walked himself to the oversized throne that had been placed outside, the god who was sent to the mortal lands to watch over them and lead them. A beacon of strength and a pillar of ultimate authority not only for his people, but to other kingdoms not yet even discovered by the 'civilized' man. Yes, not just the pharaoh as a person, but merely his position alone had other emperors quivering in fear. His armies whose numbers reached thousands. His bountiful harvest that seemed to last year-round to those from the north. The endless amounts of papyrus and wheat and other goods that the first children of the earth reaped and sowed.
Their unfathomable respect for the dead, and the strange obsession with it.
Yuugi stood next to Selene, all of them standing away from the throne. No one was allowed over there.
They were the closest to him, however.
The crowd was hushed in silence when the high preist came out, garbed in his deep purple robes and a cage in hand. A creature was sitting silently inside of it, unaware of its impending doom.
A piece of white linen lay covering the poor foul. Seth had a placid expression, believing this was the most important task one could ever undertake, and he was the one to do it. The weight of the world rested on his shoulders.
All of the pharaoh's advisors snorted.
Yuugi watched as the linen cloth was removed, and a blinded falcon was pulled forth. He could feel the silver haired woman next to him tense, a sharp breath sucked quickly into her lungs.
The bird was completely white. Large, graceful wings lay neatly tucked next to its sides, talons long and sharp that could rip a man's arm off.
"A gyre falcon," Selene breathed. "Where did he get one of those?"
"What is it," the slave questioned her.
"Yuugi, those birds are extremely rare, found only in the frozen lands of the very far north. Not even the natives of those lands dare to track these creatures."
"This is a bad sign, lover. You know it is, I know you do."
Selene nodded. The Egyptians did not like the thought of the north very well. They held that as the domain of Seth, the one that blinded Horus, and still does on the new moons. To bring such a creature from so far north, this was a slap in the face to the king. This was a warning.
If he were any different, Jade would have laughed at the irony.
Yuugi didn't want to watch when the ridiculously long blade was brought out, carved with ancient hieroglyphs and curses that secretly condemned his ruler, and hid his face in the soft white garments of the silver haired woman next to him when a sickening screech filled the air. She held him close to comfort him.
She preferred her beloved Athens and the sacrifices to Athena and Artemis. The simple legs of lamb that they would burn instead of eating. Those delicious smells wafting to her nose while she sat around the evening campfire. She had often spent the days traveling on foot, learning as she went from place to place.
Until she came here.
It was over quicker than it had started, and the pharaoh stood and ordered in fine Egyptian to all of his people to enjoy the rest of the Mesore, and to please the gods throughout the whole of Heru Behutet.
Evening came quickly for Selene. She didn't always like getting up in front of so many people. She was grateful when Yu Gi Oh restricted the watchers to a select few from the stronger families of Egypt.
People began to come from as far as India and Tibet to see her dance.
Yuugi stood next to the pharaoh itching with anticipation. His taller counterpart looked just as excited as him.
"Where is she, how much longer?"
The morning star laughed delightedly. "Calm down, little one, she will be here. Look, there she is now."
From a black doorway emerged a woman that in all respects looked like a native Egyptian. Her skin was bronze with the golden hue, lithe arms and strong legs that held her frame with poise and dignity.
But she was exotic in the fact that her hair was completely silver.
White linen was wrapped around her in a tight skirt, bound with a gold chain. Trinkets clanked from her wrists and ankles, a slim covering of metal on her upper body.
She always said that she felt like a painted doll with the black and gold makeup and symbolic designs covering her.
In the middle of the crowd now she stood, so still she could have been Pandora before animation, carved from a piece of gold marble, hair strung from precious metals. Her hands were held behind her back, her head down and eyes closed, leg poised femininely, waiting.
The drums started, and her legs began to move. She kept her arms unmoving, her head still down, but her feet pranced about as if she were a sprite from some child's fairytale.
But Yuugi was enraptured when the haunting strings joined in. Her arms started to move, and her body swayed as if she were invoking the magick of some god or goddess long ago forgotten.
"Why is her skin tanned," Yuugi wondered aloud.
"It's a charm for the dance, you'll see why," the pharaoh replied.
Selene, who was no longer Selene, but rather this dancer from a world not known to them, began to move her hands as if she were holding something fragile that might break if it were breathed upon. Her fingers tickled the empty air, shards of light responding to her beckon. Her stance, her downcast eyes concentrating on the air before her. Erotic and sensuous, yet lethal and planned. A spell was weaving about the room. None could leave, none could remove their eyes.
Her dancing continued, the light growing larger and brighter in her hands. The music was speeding up, and the crowd was being drug right along with it. Yuugi felt his heart rate increase with anticipation.
The air reeked with the surprise yet to come.
Faster and faster she danced, the light growing stronger and stronger.
And then she stopped. Arms held high above her, toes pointed, a statue yet again in the midst of a golden desert.
Her hands flew down, and the ball of light exploded on the floor. The room was bathed in a silver illumination, filling every dark corner with a preternatural life.
When Yuugi could see again, Selene was back in her own skin tone, her clothes now a white gown of some material he had never seen. Opaque and yet unrevealing, purposefully disheveled and the ends.
She looked like a colorless wood fairy, lost and far away from her homeland.
The floor was still bathed in that silver light, rippling along its way as if it were water.
And the silver woman of light began to glide across it as if it was, and she could stand on it like it was ice. It was at this point that her song began.
Low and soft at first, gradually gaining more volume. Haunting it was, but different from the drums and the strings that had just been plucked. Some language that he had never heard, filling his soul with thoughts of moonlit nights in tree filled groves.
An invisible breeze moved her silver hair about her head, light pulled up around her as she moved.
It splashed around if she jumped, or twirled, or turned. Beautiful.
The song had ended. She had stopped, her arms up again and her back rigid. She was calling the light back to her, making it close in upon her and consume her. Just when she was almost beyond sight, she flung her arms down one last, and the light left, showers of gold raining down upon the viewers.
Yuugi cheered. Yu Gi Oh smiled, and Jade was practically beaming.
She ran up to her lover, tired and covered in perspiration, a smile displayed on her flushed face. He embraced her with a welcoming hug.
"What language was that," Yuugi asked.
"No one knows," Yu Gi Oh replied. "They don't speak it often, even to each other. This is the only time you will ever hear that much of it. They usually use it to converse in secret. Not even I know what it is."
"You mean, it's not Greek?"
"It's not Greek, it's not Hebrew, or Latin or Aramaic or even Etruscan. I have no idea."
Well, now that was interesting. Yet another mystery in this strange land unchanged by time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Yu Gi Oh nuzzled Yuugi's neck, content and sleepy. He always loved the day after the Mesore.
He was allowed to sleep in.
Yuugi was snoring methodically in his sleep, unconsciously clinging to his master.
The pharaoh still had to get that preconception out of the little one's head.
Yu Gi Oh did not hear the pounding that was resounding in the hall. He didn't want to. He wanted sleep right next to his china-doll replica.
"Yu Gi Oh, Yu Gi Oh!" His name was being repeated over and over again, panic dripping with each syllable.
His chamber doors flew open, and Selene came flying in. Her hair was disheveled, her robes askew. "Yu Gi Oh, the preist has revolted!"
The king let out a string of curses in every language he knew.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Silver Lily: OOO, cliffy!!! HEHEHEHE!!! R&R!!! *sing song voice*
Jade: Chapter seven. Oh joy, oh rapture. . .
Silver Lily: Sarcastic yamis. Any way, hope that you like, please R&R!
Sunstone
* * * * * * * * * *
We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams. And yet, we are the movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Greek sighed, pacing vigorously back and forth in his chambers. Golden sunlight streamed through the ever open windows, sand adorning the neglected tables.
"Lover, what is the matter? You've been rather aloof lately. Tell me what's wrong?" Selene sat on their bed, starring worriedly at her better half.
"Something is wrong, beloved. A shadow has been hanging over my head for the past three days, foreboding something I don't even want to guess at."
He kept walking back and forth, hands clutched behind him. Selene sighed. He had been at this for two hours now.
"I just feel so helpless. I know something is wrong, but I don't even know what or how I can fix it!"
Words, words of comfort. That was what he needed right now. Someone that could sympathize with him. He was never in the position of where he couldn't do a damned thing, and that is what drove him nuts.
"Has anyone else felt this?"
"No, just growing suspicion of their enemies. No, this. . . this is something that I'm _feeling_ deep down inside. It's gnawing at my very insides, and I don't know what to do."
"The Mesore should help to relax you. After nightfall I will dance for the city. You always say that my dance comforts you."
He sighed exasperated. "I hope you're right, lover. I hope you're right."
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Ready?" The pharaoh of Thebes stood in the empty hall, awaiting his closest advisors.
"Ready, my lord," Selene replied, pulling behind her a disgruntled looking Greek. "Lover, you know that I don't like the sacrifice," he whined.
"Most of us don't, silly Greek. But it's tradition, and all of us have to be there," Kekeweht replied.
Aeyeta groaned. "That poor bird! If I controlled the wind element, I'd be tempted to blow it away to safety."
"The priests would have a fit if you did that," Selene said.
Yuugi stood warily next to Yu Gi Oh, not liking the idea of the yearly sacrifice to Horus to ensure a good crop. The pharaoh promised that it would get better after that, but the slave was still skeptical.
"This way," Tekutet motioned. "To the front of the palace."
It was almost like walking to your own eulogy, Selene always thought. To stand out in the middle of the scorching desert sun, sweat pouring down your face and sand blowing into your eyes. No one really wanted to go, but it was tradition. And it was considered polite. A beautiful creature screeching into its death. She hated it. Completely and totally hated it.
Yu Gi Oh had become immune to such things when he was younger, as did the other native Egyptians.
Seth seemed to actually thrive in such activities. A mad grin smothered on his too perfect face. Beauty always was a deceitful thing.
The whole of Thebes, and even commoners and aristocrats from neighboring villages were gathered outside the palace wall, starring expectantly at the front of the alter of the high preist, and a small table covered in old, crusted blood.
The pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt walked himself to the oversized throne that had been placed outside, the god who was sent to the mortal lands to watch over them and lead them. A beacon of strength and a pillar of ultimate authority not only for his people, but to other kingdoms not yet even discovered by the 'civilized' man. Yes, not just the pharaoh as a person, but merely his position alone had other emperors quivering in fear. His armies whose numbers reached thousands. His bountiful harvest that seemed to last year-round to those from the north. The endless amounts of papyrus and wheat and other goods that the first children of the earth reaped and sowed.
Their unfathomable respect for the dead, and the strange obsession with it.
Yuugi stood next to Selene, all of them standing away from the throne. No one was allowed over there.
They were the closest to him, however.
The crowd was hushed in silence when the high preist came out, garbed in his deep purple robes and a cage in hand. A creature was sitting silently inside of it, unaware of its impending doom.
A piece of white linen lay covering the poor foul. Seth had a placid expression, believing this was the most important task one could ever undertake, and he was the one to do it. The weight of the world rested on his shoulders.
All of the pharaoh's advisors snorted.
Yuugi watched as the linen cloth was removed, and a blinded falcon was pulled forth. He could feel the silver haired woman next to him tense, a sharp breath sucked quickly into her lungs.
The bird was completely white. Large, graceful wings lay neatly tucked next to its sides, talons long and sharp that could rip a man's arm off.
"A gyre falcon," Selene breathed. "Where did he get one of those?"
"What is it," the slave questioned her.
"Yuugi, those birds are extremely rare, found only in the frozen lands of the very far north. Not even the natives of those lands dare to track these creatures."
"This is a bad sign, lover. You know it is, I know you do."
Selene nodded. The Egyptians did not like the thought of the north very well. They held that as the domain of Seth, the one that blinded Horus, and still does on the new moons. To bring such a creature from so far north, this was a slap in the face to the king. This was a warning.
If he were any different, Jade would have laughed at the irony.
Yuugi didn't want to watch when the ridiculously long blade was brought out, carved with ancient hieroglyphs and curses that secretly condemned his ruler, and hid his face in the soft white garments of the silver haired woman next to him when a sickening screech filled the air. She held him close to comfort him.
She preferred her beloved Athens and the sacrifices to Athena and Artemis. The simple legs of lamb that they would burn instead of eating. Those delicious smells wafting to her nose while she sat around the evening campfire. She had often spent the days traveling on foot, learning as she went from place to place.
Until she came here.
It was over quicker than it had started, and the pharaoh stood and ordered in fine Egyptian to all of his people to enjoy the rest of the Mesore, and to please the gods throughout the whole of Heru Behutet.
Evening came quickly for Selene. She didn't always like getting up in front of so many people. She was grateful when Yu Gi Oh restricted the watchers to a select few from the stronger families of Egypt.
People began to come from as far as India and Tibet to see her dance.
Yuugi stood next to the pharaoh itching with anticipation. His taller counterpart looked just as excited as him.
"Where is she, how much longer?"
The morning star laughed delightedly. "Calm down, little one, she will be here. Look, there she is now."
From a black doorway emerged a woman that in all respects looked like a native Egyptian. Her skin was bronze with the golden hue, lithe arms and strong legs that held her frame with poise and dignity.
But she was exotic in the fact that her hair was completely silver.
White linen was wrapped around her in a tight skirt, bound with a gold chain. Trinkets clanked from her wrists and ankles, a slim covering of metal on her upper body.
She always said that she felt like a painted doll with the black and gold makeup and symbolic designs covering her.
In the middle of the crowd now she stood, so still she could have been Pandora before animation, carved from a piece of gold marble, hair strung from precious metals. Her hands were held behind her back, her head down and eyes closed, leg poised femininely, waiting.
The drums started, and her legs began to move. She kept her arms unmoving, her head still down, but her feet pranced about as if she were a sprite from some child's fairytale.
But Yuugi was enraptured when the haunting strings joined in. Her arms started to move, and her body swayed as if she were invoking the magick of some god or goddess long ago forgotten.
"Why is her skin tanned," Yuugi wondered aloud.
"It's a charm for the dance, you'll see why," the pharaoh replied.
Selene, who was no longer Selene, but rather this dancer from a world not known to them, began to move her hands as if she were holding something fragile that might break if it were breathed upon. Her fingers tickled the empty air, shards of light responding to her beckon. Her stance, her downcast eyes concentrating on the air before her. Erotic and sensuous, yet lethal and planned. A spell was weaving about the room. None could leave, none could remove their eyes.
Her dancing continued, the light growing larger and brighter in her hands. The music was speeding up, and the crowd was being drug right along with it. Yuugi felt his heart rate increase with anticipation.
The air reeked with the surprise yet to come.
Faster and faster she danced, the light growing stronger and stronger.
And then she stopped. Arms held high above her, toes pointed, a statue yet again in the midst of a golden desert.
Her hands flew down, and the ball of light exploded on the floor. The room was bathed in a silver illumination, filling every dark corner with a preternatural life.
When Yuugi could see again, Selene was back in her own skin tone, her clothes now a white gown of some material he had never seen. Opaque and yet unrevealing, purposefully disheveled and the ends.
She looked like a colorless wood fairy, lost and far away from her homeland.
The floor was still bathed in that silver light, rippling along its way as if it were water.
And the silver woman of light began to glide across it as if it was, and she could stand on it like it was ice. It was at this point that her song began.
Low and soft at first, gradually gaining more volume. Haunting it was, but different from the drums and the strings that had just been plucked. Some language that he had never heard, filling his soul with thoughts of moonlit nights in tree filled groves.
An invisible breeze moved her silver hair about her head, light pulled up around her as she moved.
It splashed around if she jumped, or twirled, or turned. Beautiful.
The song had ended. She had stopped, her arms up again and her back rigid. She was calling the light back to her, making it close in upon her and consume her. Just when she was almost beyond sight, she flung her arms down one last, and the light left, showers of gold raining down upon the viewers.
Yuugi cheered. Yu Gi Oh smiled, and Jade was practically beaming.
She ran up to her lover, tired and covered in perspiration, a smile displayed on her flushed face. He embraced her with a welcoming hug.
"What language was that," Yuugi asked.
"No one knows," Yu Gi Oh replied. "They don't speak it often, even to each other. This is the only time you will ever hear that much of it. They usually use it to converse in secret. Not even I know what it is."
"You mean, it's not Greek?"
"It's not Greek, it's not Hebrew, or Latin or Aramaic or even Etruscan. I have no idea."
Well, now that was interesting. Yet another mystery in this strange land unchanged by time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Yu Gi Oh nuzzled Yuugi's neck, content and sleepy. He always loved the day after the Mesore.
He was allowed to sleep in.
Yuugi was snoring methodically in his sleep, unconsciously clinging to his master.
The pharaoh still had to get that preconception out of the little one's head.
Yu Gi Oh did not hear the pounding that was resounding in the hall. He didn't want to. He wanted sleep right next to his china-doll replica.
"Yu Gi Oh, Yu Gi Oh!" His name was being repeated over and over again, panic dripping with each syllable.
His chamber doors flew open, and Selene came flying in. Her hair was disheveled, her robes askew. "Yu Gi Oh, the preist has revolted!"
The king let out a string of curses in every language he knew.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Silver Lily: OOO, cliffy!!! HEHEHEHE!!! R&R!!! *sing song voice*