(author's note: Have not updated in a long time. I've prewritten ALOT of this story, so I decided to keep going. Please stop complaining about my tenses and my choice of character names.)

Chapter Seven - Hairdressers, Garlic Bread, and Dreams

Maaliki shook his head and I heard him follow. He walked in front of me and turned around and handed me a large red coat. Here, it'll be nightfall soon, you might get cold. I looked at the coat. I snatched it and put it on. I huffed and folded my arms in it.

He gave me a sympathetic look and motioned for me to follow him again, "I'll show you to where you can stay until dinner."

I followed, and the coat dragged on the ground it was so big. We turned a corner to another section of the court yard and there was a whole troop of girls giggling. The one in the middle said something again and pointed at me and waved with a smile. All of them giggled and waved too.

I stopped and gawked. Who were all the pretty girls?

Maaliki grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me on.

"Hey, slow down-"

"Ignore and follow."

"But-"

"It's just my sister and her hair dressers!"

I shut up and let him drag me back up to the room I woke up in. He pulled a bowl of dates off of a table in the corner and I immediately snatched several handfuls from the bowls.

"Gods, Bakura, you must be hungry?"

"Starving. I haven't eaten anything in a day or two." I said while stuffing my mouth and sitting down on the pillows.

He sat down across from me and stared at me while I ate.

"What?" I asked.

"You eat with your mouth wide open." he said after a few moments of silence, "Father isn't going to like that."

"Well, priestie, I'm no aristocrat." I said while I tried to take time in chewing my food longer.

He twitched, "Well, can you please not do that tonight? I don't want father to kick you out of the house with your manners. Or because of your smell... you do know you smell like fish right?"

...duh.

"I caught a ride upriver with a fisherman. I'm from-"

Where can I tell him I'm from without him blabbing to his father and the priests? I mused.

"I... am from one of the old villages that helped move stones upriver to the pyramids in lower Egypt."

Quite literally, this was in fact true. It just so happened my village turned rebellious afterwards and went into the Valley of the Kings or even back upriver to the Great Pyramids to steal from the tombs. Also notorious as a trading center, we also had a good supply of animals, linens, spices, and beer. What would this Maaliki kid have thought if I had told him exactly where I was from?

"Didn't the villagers hired to build the temples and tombs go back to their own towns when they were done?"

He didn't know?

"The tombs and temples sometimes take many years and generations to build. Most people don't have families to go back to. Though many ahem of the working villages now have bad reputations, its better to have a bad rep than to go back to living in the slums on the outskirts of Karnak or Aswan."

"Where's your family originally from?" he asked curiously, "You have pale skin and hair even lighter than mine."

"My family consisted, starting with my grandparents on my father's side, of a runaway Hebrew from the North and a Nubian skirt girl. My mother is from Philae after the first cataract."

Maaliki was surprised I actually knew/had a family history. I continued to pick the dates out of the bowl and put a few handfuls into my new red coat for later. After a few minutes of silence the blond spoke.

"Dinner is steak and garlic bread."

"Garlic? Where are we going?"

Garlic usually means you're going into the desert. Supposedly the desert was covered in ghosts and demons and they didn't like garlic or honey and would avoid would-be travelers. Unless they were taking a caravan ride someplace I saw no reason to waste money on garlic. It happened to have been expensive. ...oh well, they are rich folks after all.

"Father is going to a temple in Naquada to talk to the gods about a dream he had a night ago. Some of the other priests had it as well, they're going to go find out what it means."

My muscles tensed and I swallowed another mouthful of dates to keep me from yelling out in rage. A dream? They're passing off the destruction of Kru-elna as an illusion! Damn their souls all to Anubis!

"Well," Maaliki said standing up, "I'm going to go take my bath, so I'll send up some servants to get you clothes and the like and then you can follow them down so you can get washed up for dinner."

He left me and when he was gone I looked into the empty date bowl and grabbed a pillow and screamed into it so not a soul could hear me. I hated aristocrats and their fancy baths and rituals and soaps.

And then I began to notice all over again... all the pillows smelled of citrus soaps.