I posted this early: busy Friday morning. Enjoy!
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As always read, review, comment, critique and ask questions, and post theories!
Now enjoy more Timaeus and Yugi interaction ;)
Chapter XIX: Dreams
The city of Djanet seemed to function as a single fortress. The city itself was an enormous, rectangular enclosure housing an entire complex in its perimeter. The massive white stoned pylon was peppered with large gates and the Great Temple at its heart, a grand replica of its southern cousin in Waset on two monstrous mounds with two deep circular walls in its center, an in-progress sanctuary devoted to Amun. Different from its counterpart, however, were the richly decorated and inscribed blocks and columns used to create it. Recycled obelisks and statues of various dates incorporated all the grand splendor of Ramses II. Directly adjacent to the temple's first court between the 1st and 2nd pylons the Royal Temple stood grand and proud: towering obelisks flocked either side of a trapezoidal entrance and open, inner box shape. Connected by the Window of Appearances, the palace was constructed high on elevated platforms accessible by ramps and overlooked every of the city angle. Smaller but imperious sanctuaries to lesser Gods, festival chapels and separate living arrangements dotted the inner southeast enclosure. Opposite it was a stunning sacred lake surrounded by Delta wildlife, and clustered in the Temple's eastern shadow, was the inner city: a grid-style labyrinth of interconnected walls and houses, built small and close together on either side of narrow roads.
It was alive and clustered and looked confusing yet the people navigated it with ease, and Yugi was no exception. Timaeus was not, and he quickly found his senses assaulted from all sides. Lost in the cacophony of complaining animals, squealing children and haggling vendors, the aroma of perfume, fruit and scented oils crashing with the reek of dirt, sweat and heat; the noise, smells and sites crashed against the sheer and utter fascination of it all.
The city itself was constructed simply, and crafted from mud-brick with flat roves that acted as occasional living spaces. Ladders connected to upper decks where smoke fires were burning, and beehive shaped storage units stood, and thatched roofs provided shade. Roads, if any, were narrow and sandy and had small shops boasting jewels and fruits or livestock, were simple wooden boxes shadowed by thatched roofs. Roads disappearing into the maze of villas dotting the outer enclosure and towered high above the others.
It was so much different from Locri.
Yugi watched his wide-eyed guardian's fascination. Gone was the cold and stoic Trierarch, and the devoted Knight who knew only obedience. "Enjoying yourself?" he said slyly and stopped at a booth bragging fresh figs and foreign grapes.
Timaeus spun to him his eye wide and his smile bright with childish wonder. "I am enjoying myself very much, little one." His smirk was nothing like the guardian who teased him mercilessly. It was bright and vibrant with all the exuberant optimism of a youth promising an adventure. "I see why the first king chose it for the dynasty's capital. I've never seen anything like it."
At the mention of his deceased father, Yugi froze, lost in separate realm that lasted only the span of a gasp. He dismissed the vendor with a wave of his hand and spun to Timaeus, uttering quickly, "I thought you saw it when you arrived here with Atlantis?"
Hearing the stutter in the words, Timaeus stopped and turned to him. He blinked for a moment, but Yugi didn't look away. Decidedly, Timaeus smiled and replied "I glanced at it upon our arrival, yes, but I'm afraid I didn't have time to properly explore it before my brigade was sent south. It'd please me greatly to see more of it, if you wouldn't mind?" he asked with a hopeful, smile.
Like a child asking to play outside before doing his chores, Yugi thought. "I suppose, I could show you," he teased, violet eyes half-lidded and sparkling with mischief and took the man's hand and raised his finger, "but," he scolded half-sternly. "You have to promise to stay by my side and not go running after everything pretty. I can't have you getting lost now can I?"
He laughed when Timaeus' brows knitted together. If not for the frustration blazing in his green eye, Yugi would've mistaken it for a pout. "I am seven and twenty, little one," Timaeus growled the fact, emphasizing the age difference between them. "I have the control and the sense to not act so childishly."
Yugi chuckled and jokingly, "Now why should I believe that?"
It was a joke, Timaeus knew, an attempt to bait him into a trap, but the Trierarch knew better, "Because, Yugi," Timaeus pulled on Yugi's hand, dragging him back against his chest and purred his name in his ear. "If I wasn't, I'd have had you in my arms long ago."
Paralysis washed over him and Yugi felt his entire body freeze in place. How on Geb's flesh could he say something like that so casually? Yugi felt dizzy until a tug on his hand returned him to reality.
"Coming?" Timaeus asked with a smile, so innocent Yugi was stunned by it. Timaeus held out his hand again, like a gentleman inviting his partner to dance, and it surprised him how much that thought delighted him.
"I-" He wanted to speak but he couldn't say the words. The air felt constricted from his lungs. His fingers twitched wanting to take the hand held out to him and all the world it promised, but he hesitated.
"It's alright," Timaeus promised, sensing his hesitation. "I promised to protect you, Nothing more," he said firm and blunt, but honestly added. "Unless you ask me."
Yugi felt his chest stop working, his mind shut down and then his heart fluttered, and willed his body to move. Slowly, the hand reached up—
—and was cut by a loud, dative shriek piercing the market place. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T SELL IT TO ME!" Someone screamed in Aramaic, but it lost its smooth curve and slipped into a harsh, hissing dialect Yugi had never heard of.
"Is that Greek?" Yugi blinked, not recognizing the dialect.
"Close," Timaeus eyes narrowed, all emotion from earlier gone from his face. "It's Locrian." He spun on his heels and gestured Yugi to follow him. He did without question, curiosity drawing him and the rest of the crowd towards the ruckus.
"And there is only one person I know who screams like that when she's angry," Timaeus mumbled a growl and found his suspicions confirmed when he spotted Rhebekka, her golden hair cascading down her back and her physician smock, the coolest outfit she owned, giving her the appearance of a native Kemet.
The vendor she was arguing with was an elder man, skin darkened brown by the fierce sun and held his shaking, calloused hands up in a weak attempt to calm her.
"Rhebekka!" Timaeus snapped, and she spun around dutifully. "What's going on here?"
"I'm trying to place an order" Rhebekka snapped, throwing a thumb over her shoulder. "And he's trying to welsh on our deal."
The gathering crowd turned their eyes to the terrified man, spotlighted under the attention. He spoke in jumbles, Rhebekka clearly didn't understand them, but Yugi did.
"Wait, Rhebekka," Yugi ran ahead. He mollified in Kemetic. The man immediately perked up and gestured to the rows of dried Nile perch, continually bowing as he moved.
Yugi nodded and turned to his friend with a frown. "Rhebekka? He says you ordered his entire stock of Nile perch?"
"That's because I did!" She confirmed.
Timaeus arched a brow.
"What?" she demanded, annoyed by the accusation. "I am feeding an army?"
"But all his dried fish?" Yugi asked sympathetically stunned.
"It's a long ride back to Atlantis," Rhebekka explained. "Anything else would spoil. I offered to pay for it all, I have the funds."
Yugi relayed the information to the vendor who continued bowing apologetically and sputter explanations. Yugi sighed. "He says money isn't the problem. He has other orders to make and perch takes time to catch and dry. If he can't make the orders, he'd have to close his shop until he could catch more, and he'd risk his business. Without it he wouldn't be able to feed his family."
"Is there a way to provide him with enough income until that time?" Timaeus turned to Rhebekka who shook her head.
"I have an idea," Yugi assured him, and unclipped the broach from the front of his copelet: an image of Nekbet outlined in gold and outfitted with precious stones. He handed it to the vendor, who gaped stunned. His eyes became wet with joy, and he repeated the same word over and over again to Yugi with a bow.
Timaeus was stunned for a moment then smiled when Yugi returned to him. "That was very generous of you?"
Yugi shrugged his shoulders. "There are more at the palace." He smiled then gasped when Rhebekka glomped him from behind.
"Oh thank you! Thank you!" She squeezed him tight. "I was afraid of causing a scene!"
Timaeus rolled his eyes and pried the girl off his charge, "Don't you have work to do?"
Rhebekka turned to him but didn't let go of Yugi. She summed her Trierarch up with a quick look over: his rigged posture, his tapping foot, the impatience on his face. She grinned. "Even on land you're a Trierarch," she teased. "Fine, fine," She barked for her assistants, and started giving orders. She spun to Yugi with a final happy goodbye.
"Is she always like this?" Yugi asked with a groan.
"Unfortunately," Timaeus sighed, and wiped the sweat from his brow. The morning air was cool but the sun was hot and Timaeus felt a thin layer of sweat forming between his skin and his under-armor. "Shall we continue our tour?" He suggested and smiled when Yugi smirked.
By the time Amun had completed his mid-way journey and become Ra, the pair stopped to rest at a large well built from a ring of stones.
"I must command your navigation skills, little one," Timaeus collapsed on the stone rim. Yugi slouched against his side. The city of Djanet was a massive labyrinth of crowded buildings of various geometric blocks and straight line streets, and Yugi had navigated the catacombs and back allies like the walls were invisible. To Timaeus surprise they all led back to a singular road perpendicular to the Royal Way leading to the Temple and Palace complex, where all life accumulated. Carpenters, blacksmiths, potters, seamstresses and all manners of craftsmen set up fruit stands on wood crates or displayed their beautiful artistic creations on mats in the shade of palm trees.
Timaeus complimented. "I imagine you must've spent quite a lot of time in the cities?"
"Not quite," Yugi confessed and closed his eyes recalling the memory. "Once my studies began the Hem-netjer saw fit to regulate my city visits, but I didn't mind."
"You didn't?" Timaeus asked curiously.
Yugi shook his head. "Honestly, the city bored me, and so did the desert. I preferred the delta: the gardens, the rivers, the lakes: there's more to see and more to explore."
"I can see why," Timaeus purred in agreement, "It certainly appeals to the adventure's spirit."
"Of which you are living proof," Yugi giggled. "I imagine it's very different from the Locri you love to brag about."
"Indeed," Timaeus nodded.
"What's it like?" He spun to Timaeus, legs folded under him and his chin resting in the arch of his folded palms. "Your home? Locri? Atlantis? Tell me everything!"
"Everything?" Timaeus chuckled at his enthusiasm "Curious little beastie, aren't you?"
Yugi's jeweled eyes shined with the childish wonder and curious excitement of a child waiting for a story.
"Well, where do I begin?" He pretended to ponder. Then his deep baritone rose with the high tune of an enthusiastic story teller. "She is a beautiful county; an island far North from here. Her air is not dry nor hot, but cool and moistened by the sea. Her northern portions are mountains that trail all along the East coast, and her south encompasses a great more. Her Western flank borders a wide river that separates her from the colonies of Greece.
"Her capital city is an island that rises out of the sea: houses, libraries, market places, all spiral up a single cobblestone street up a hillside and at the top if the grandest palace you've ever seen. Her architecture is towers and spires and windows of glass, our buildings are curved and oddly shaped and we build them into the mountain herself. Her island is the heart of our country enclosed by three circular moats: each one larger than the last and separated by a land of proportional width where the city continues to grow."
"How do you cross the moats then?" Yugi asked aghast with imaginative wonder.
Timaeus grinned "Bridges, we built bridges between the canals, and each canal is flanked by a wall guarded by gates and towers. And, alongside the bridges and carved into the ring of rocks, are curved tunnels that allow ships to pass." He spoke this part with particular enthusiasm like he was sharing a privileged secret.
Yugi's eyes bulged with stunned mystification and his jaw was open with little gasps, his imagination tried picturing such a place but it sounded too surreal, like a fairy tale or a children's dream. "And Locri?" he asked.
Timaeus grinned like a cat. "Atlantis is an island city and an island county: the King rules the capital from the heart, but the outer rings are divided into the Western, Southern and Eastern cities, each one guarded and ruled by a Dragon Knight. I am the Guardian and Govenor of Locri, the Eastern City. You would love her, Yugi. They call her the Flower of Atlantis: she's built right into the mountains, and her winds are fierce, but she's built right on the shore of the sea's third ring. Her people are kind and strong, and we know how to live with the mountain and wind and the sea. Our streets are paved with stone, our homes are built from wood and on stilts and their shapes are various and elaborate, and many of their roofs are flat as to overlook the city and the shore. My own villa is built at the top of the hill, close to the temple of Our Lady Persephone."
Timaeus stopped when he realized he'd looked away and was beginning to ramble. He chuckled to himself and returned to Yugi, who looked not bewildered by his ramblings but fascinated and mystified.
"It sounds magnificent!" Yugi said dreamily. "I'd love that, to be able to look over the sea every day." He's spoken it in a way as if he was making a wish to heaven. Timaeus understood why when he added "I've never been to the sea. Is it beautiful?"
Timaeus looked stunned. Kemet was isolated on two sides by ocean. But when he saw Yugi's dreamy-eyes gaze and the desperate line of his smile, his curiosity softened and he pondered his next words carefully "She's as blue as the Nile but larger than Lake Manzala. She's so vast, she expands in every direction so all you can see is when she kisses the sky, and they blend so well together you can never tell when one world ends and another begins," he explained with passionate respect, his eyes cast heavenward. "She is a temperamental mistress, she can be peaceful and calm one moment, then savage and ruthless the next and she's always singing with a rhythm of moving waves and blowing wind. She takes you wherever you wish to go, yet you could sail for a hundred years and never see all of her."
"It sounds magnificent," Yugi mumbled, looking at his lap. "I hope I can see it one day."
"I have no doubt you will, little one," Timaeus encourages squeezing his hand. "And what other dreams do you have?"
Yugi froze his eyes wide but focused forward, as if the question surprised him. When he didn't move Timaeus called again "Yugi?"
His hand trembled. Then his shoulders. Then his entire body shook with sobs. Stunned, Timaeus tentatively brushed Yugi's cheek, "It's alright?" he mollified softly. "Don't cry."
Yugi jumped, mortified and hid his tear-streaked face in his hands. Timaeus jumped back, terrified he'd made a mistake, but seeing Yugi's feeble position and the muffled cries he tried desperately to hide, his protective instincts slammed into action and he scooped the boy into his arms.
Yugi gasped in surprise, but Timaeus held him firm, and Yugi found the warm chest and strong arms surprisingly comforting, but Timaeus' fingers trembled, unsure if moving them would distress Yugi further. "Forgive me," he pleaded. "I didn't mean to upset you?"
Regaining his sense, Yugi pulled away and shook his head fiercely. "It wasn't that!" He insisted, mortified by is outburst. "I'm sorry, it's just," he paused. "No one's ever," he bit his lip. "Asked me that before. What I wanted?"
Timaeus gaped, a mixture of stunned shock and horrified rage. "Not even your siblings?"
Yugi blushed. "I was a spoiled child," he admitted. "I expected my freedom like I expected Amun to rise, and I expected everyone in my life to be there, I expected everything to be the same. I had no idea the risks my mother and sisters took for me when my father died. I never realized just how dependent on them I actually was until mother died. Then all of my choices were stolen from me." There was a bitter chuckle in his next words. "The Divine Servant and Divine Adoratrice always hated me for not loving them the way I loved Pas and Mut, they didn't think I knew but I did. They loved my mother, sometimes I think more than they loved their own. I suppose my love was the closest they could come to having hers again. Keeping me isolated, they most likely thought they could force my love. It wouldn't surprise me." He said the words so coldly, like his love was a thing to be bartered and sold, taken and claimed, by all but himself.
It sent a chill of rage up Timaeus spine.
"And to answer your question, I think they wanted an heir. Or rather they wanted me to be their heir." He snorted and added, "Perhaps they thought if I was forced to stay, they could pretend I was there willingly."
A wave of guilt stung Timaeus in the chest, but it quickly turned to resolve. He clenched Yugi's hand and said. "I imagine it infuriated them even more that you made no effort to humor that delusion?" He made them sound humorous but no less honest.
Yugi couldn't stop the laugh at that. "You don't think I had my own secret agenda toying with their emotions?" Yugi asked with a devious, but half-hearted smile.
Timaeus shook his head with a closed sigh. "I told you before, Yugi, there is no doubt in my mind you do not have nor had anything to do with their plot, but if it is as you say perhaps it was just petty jealousy. It would be a relief if it was only sibling vengeance and not rebellion they were after?"
"I doubt it," Yugi confessed. "They had far too much pride in their positions to ever leave them. They just wanted their influence respected. Given our childhood they probably thought Pas would be petty enough to deny them that." Yugi shook his head in disgust. "What folly."
"Indeed," Timaeus agreed, and then gently took Yugi's hand again. "But you never answered my question, little one, if and only if you're willing to answer?"
Yugi blinked, bewildered, and the innocence pulled at Timaeus' heartstrings. Oh this beautiful youth truly would be the death of him. "What are your dreams and goals?"
Yugi hesitated. All his life he'd trained with hem-netjer of Mut-Sekhmet, he'd enjoyed the teachings and the traveling but it was his mother's calling and had simply been routine, and then out of respect for her memory. His role as youngest child and to a lesser wife denied him any real position of power in the government. If he truly admitted it, there were things he'd wished to experience: it was his most treasured kept secret.
"I'd like," he admitted, more to himself, then his guardian. "To travel, beyond the Nile and see the worlds beyond Kemet. I'm not sure. I think it hasn't reached me yet that I'm free now, I'm truly free." I can choose. He realized, and it was a surreal though, this ability to decide one's fate.
"You will one day, little one," Timaeus voice was a soft, encouraging purr, rolled and relaxed as thunder and filled with so much pride and promise. "Of that I have no doubt, and," he added with a sudden enthusiasm, "If ever you wish to visit Atlantis, my ship would be happy to have you as a passenger." He winked.
Yugi laughed and thanked him, only vaguely surprised by how easy it was to talk to Timaeus. To lean into his side and pretend the sun wasn't setting. To open his heart and share his secrets. He should've felt embarrassed and exposed. Instead, there was only confidence. With Timaeus there was no ridicule or simple waiting for him to finish ranting, only an earnest ear and encouraging words.
It surprised Timaeus how easily Yugi affected him. Even now, with his eyes closed and face serene and cuddled against his side, Timaeus knew he should've been guarded, yet all he wanted was to remove his armor and relax into the sweet hold. It was refreshing, this new innocent spirit: it was not shy nor was it meek; it was not flashy and flirtatiously confident. It was open and sweet, but there was fight burning like fire in those expressive eyes. It was so different from the ferocious, defensive creature who fancied himself a prisoner on his ship.
Timaeus smiled and closed his eyes, his fingers trailing to twirl in Yugi's soft tresses, surprised by how much that pleased him.
Suddenly Yugi sat up, and took his hand. "Come with me," he said dragging the bewildered Timaeus down the street. "Yugi? Wha-?"
He never got to finish his sentence. Because over his shoulder, Yugi smiled. "I want to show you something."
This was one of my fav chapters just cause of that final scene ;) Any guesses what Yugi's gonna show Timaeus ;)
Also little note, I'm gonna be doing the NaNoWriMo next month (though in my own way as i won't be using the website) but I plan on writing the final chapters of the Djanet arc next week and to Halloween so I will have the whole month of November taken care of, so i can focus on just writing my novel since its LONG over do. So wish me luck!
NEXT TIME: Another step in a new direction is taken: one through a sanctuary, the other through a game.