Willowshipping (Arthur x Kisara)

(soooo, I may be wrong, but I am assuming that the Arthur in question is Arthur Hopkins (or Arthur Hawkins) Rebecca's father and Yugi's grandpa's old friend, only I'm writing this as though he's quite a bit younger, like twenty, so Yugi and Rebecca haven't been born and he hasn't met Sugoroku yet. Here goes nothing.)

"All right everyone, let's call it a day!" Arthur Hopkins shouted, with his hands cupped around his mouth.

He repeated the sentence in Arabic, Japanese, and French, so that every excavator on site would understand what he meant. Slowly, people started to filter away from the neatly sectioned grid, taking tools and clipboards of scribbled notes along with them. They converged into tiny groups of their own nationality, and hushed tones in various languages simulated the sound of a light breeze.

Unfortunately, there was no real breeze at this dig in the Valley of the Kings, and Arthur pulled off his hat to wipe at his brow. At least the sun had begun to set, and the air was swiftly cooling into shades of twilight.

The dig was nearly empty, and Arthur knew he should get to his car before he was left entirely alone. But he couldn't help but turn to admire the deepening shadows of the softly sloping Valley of the Kings, thinking about all the tombs that had already been uncovered, and hoping to himself that he would be the next to find one.

Why, Howard Carter himself stood in this very place, he thought, feeling rather pleased by the idea.

A rustling noise caught his attention – a noise that was very out of place in a world of sloping sand. More than a bit nervous about lingering too long, he glanced over his shoulder. Nothing. The rustling came again, more obviously in front of him, and Arthur suddenly identified it as the sound of clothing sliding against itself. Several horror stories about bandits came to him, and he backed away from the slope.

A shadow melted from the deepening darkness, slipping and stumbling across the sand. Arthur paused, though his mind kept assaulting him with the instinct to flee. This was no bandit – the figure was clumsy, and fell several times trying to climb the sandy hill. It appeared injured, even. Still, Arthur knew enough to realize the possibility of a bluff, and did not go down the hill to assist the shadow.

Eventually, the figure came up the hill enough for the setting sunlight to fall across her – for it was a her, not an it. Arthur drew in a breath. Who was this girl?

She was thin, almost painfully so, and her brown tunic looked to be the same material as a sack. Her skin was pale, so there was no possible way that she was native Egyptian, and her hair fell almost to the ground, glinting a pale whitish blue like water. She stumbled again, and this time when she hit the sand, she didn't get back up.

Arthur threw all caution to the wind, half running, half sliding down the slope towards her.

"Are you all right?" he called. "Can you hear me?"

Her face jerked upwards at his voice as he reached her, and terror flashed across her eyes. She jerked backwards, which is a difficult thing to do when one is laying stomach down in the sand, and she ended up half somersaulting backwards, during which Arthur tried to grab her hand to steady her and found himself yanked downwards himself. The pair tumbled down through the shadowy sands before landing in a heap halfway down the slope. Arthur disentangled himself, and moved quickly to make sure the girl was uninjured.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to startle you like that – are you all right?"

The girl's eyes widened, and then she frowned, her brow furrowing. She said a few words in a language that Arthur surprisingly did not understand.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But I don't understand."

He tried asking her whether she understood Arabic, or French, or German, or English, even Japanese, though she certainly didn't look Asian.

She just looked at him a bit fearfully and kept shaking her head, as though the words grated against her. Arthur sighed, leaning back.

"Well, I'm at a loss," he said. "You must be from very far away."

She seemed to have calmed down a little bit. At least, she had stopped trembling and staring at him like a frightened rabbit. She blinked a few times, chewing on her lip. Then she spoke the strange language again. It sounded like a question.

"What? I'm sorry, I don't understand."

She hesitated, and then pointed to herself.

"Kisara," she said softly. "Kisara."

"Kisara?" he said.

She nodded. She pointed to him, cocking her head questioningly.

"My name?" he said.

"Mai neim?" she said, looking confused.

"Oh, no, no, no! I'm Arthur," he said, pointing to himself. "Arthur."

"Arthur?" she said.

"That's right. Arthur."

She nodded slowly. Arthur sighed. Well, he knew her name, but that wasn't going to help him any. He would have to find out where she came from, so he could get her back home before the sun set completely.

He had barely finished the thought when the last rays of light vanished over the crest of the hill. Kisara didn't make a sound, but her slow shudder was obviously apparent. The dark frightened her, he realized.

"Are you lost?" he asked. "Where did you come from?"

She shook her head, hugging herself and trembling. Arthur reached out to her, but she flinched away. It was funny, how even though it had gotten darker, he could almost see her more clearly. Most clearly the huge welts and bruises all across her arms.

"Who did that to you?" he said.

He didn't know why he kept asking questions if she couldn't understand him. Maybe it was his way of fighting off the stress of being veritably alone at night in the middle of nowhere, Egypt.

She swallowed loudly. Then, with a shaking finger, she started to trace in the dirt. Arthur sighed deeply. She was too scared. He couldn't leave her here, and it was obvious that she wouldn't let him close enough to get her out of here.

Then his thoughts froze. He stared at the sand where her finger moved ever faster and more elegantly.

Egyptian hieroglyphics, he thought, amazed. She's writing hieroglyphics as though it were the alphabet!

She stopped her writing, and looked up at him. She spoke, a question, and Arthur suddenly thought that he might know the words. He leaned forward, taking a look at the glyphs on the ground. Slowly and painfully, his eyes flicked across the lettering, translating in his head, not an easy feat for a language thousands of years old.

I don't know how I got here. I was looking for Seto. But I got lost. I was with him one minute, but then he disappeared. I'm supposed to be with him! I can't find him!

It was obvious she hadn't meant for him to be able to read the words, and she looked at him questioningly. She spoke once more, and if Arthur really stretched his mind, smoothing out the inflections and turning the words into phonetics in his mind, he could almost identify them as the spoken word of the hieroglyphics.

He stared at her, his mouth hanging open. Could she really be speaking Ancient Egyptian? But the language hadn't been spoken aloud for almost three thousand years! Where had she learned?

Slowly, he traced a few symbols into the dirt. Her eyes widened as he formed the slow sentences.

I can understand you this way.

Her hand went to her mouth, and she stared at him again with huge blue eyes. She, too, went to work in the sand.

You can write it, but not speak it?

It's a long story.

Do you know where I am?

Egypt, the Valley of the Kings.

That's not possible. I was at the temple of Ra with Seto. I was...(here she paused) playing a Shadow Game. Seto's life was in danger, I remember.

A Shadow Game?

You have not heard of it? The pharaoh and his guardians control great beings of the shadows, and use them to defend themselves and others.

What kinds of beings?

Arthur was intrigued now. He had seen various paintings of strange creatures tombs recently excavated by a friend of his, and though his friend had waved them off as mere symbolism, Arthur couldn't help but feel drawn to them, like they were living beings.

Monsters, or humanlike beings, like sorcerers. And the pharaoh himself controls the gods. He can call down Ra and Osiris to defend his people.

You must be mistaken. There are no pharaohs in Egypt any more. There haven't been for almost three thousand years.

She stopped writing, staring at him with a strange look in her eyes – a scared look.

Then...when am I?

When?

It was his turn to stare. Come to think of it, she had a strange glow, even in the darkness. Was it even possible...

Her finger moved with blurred speed.

I think I understand, now. This is why I can't find Seto. I am lost – very lost. I must find him.

She looked up at him, and spoke three words, only one of which Arthur understood – his own name. Then, with a sad slowness, she drew one more symbol in the dirt.

And vanished.

Arthur froze. It was a long, long moment before he found the strength to move again. Had he really spoken to a ghost? Did that mean that tomb curses could exist? Spirits were real? She could not be a mirage, for it was the middle of the night and mirages couldn't write in the dirt, and her words were still there.

There was, of course, the possibility that he was dreaming, but a good pinch to the arm dismissed that theory.

He turned his gaze to the final image she had drawn. He drew in a sharp breath as he realized that it was not just a drawing.

It was a piece of paper – no, a card. When had that gotten there? Carefully, he extracted it from the dirt, brushing sand from it.

The holographic front gleamed in the moonlight.

The Blue Eyes White Dragon.

Kisara's blue eyes and white hair flashed into his mind. Suddenly, he knew what her last words had meant.

"Thank you, Arthur."

He stood quickly, clutching the card. Whatever had happened here...he would never forget it.

"Goodbye, Kisara," he said.

The dragon gleamed in his hand.

A/N: so I did a little twofold maneuver here: I explained where Arthur got a hold of the Blue Eyes White Dragon in the first place (before he gave it to Sugoroku), and why he ending up thinking that there was a correlation between ancient Egypt and Duel Monsters, which I think was a bit of a stretch on his part without some sort of explanation. Yeah, and I have no idea if it would be possible to speak conversationally in hieroglyphics like that, but it made a good story. :3 Next is Whispershipping (Possessed Jonouchi x Kaiba). Sigh, another pairing that insists that possessed Jonouchi is a separate character.