A/N My thanks to Gasaway Alley and TwiliteAddict for validating. TwiliteAddict's Honeymoon Suite recently received a recommendation from LadyLawyer on The Fictionators! Make sure to check out this dearly loved Twilight honeymoon fic!
From Chapter 10...
"Eleazar Morales, you have the guarantee of the god who created that Djinn. They called me Atum when I remained motionless, containing the absolute information before the creation of this Universe. They called me Ptah when I set in motion the information that created the stars, the planets, and the natural kingdoms upon them. And when I created the consciousness of man, they called me...Amun-Ra."
Amun, High Priest of the OurosBouros, was none other than Amun-Ra, god of the Sun, the Father of our goddess, Hathor, The Source. This was way beyond any question I was looking for the answer to.
The Sun-god pulsed with power above me, his divine light flooding my consciousness, bleaching away the stain left from the Djinn's greasy negativity. Freed from the disruption the Djinn caused to my powers, I flexed my ability to poke around in his power signature, surprised and dismayed by what I picked up.
Amun-Ra's power, though strong enough to bring me to my knees, did not hold the heat necessary to be foil to the harsh raping chill of his forsaken daughter's, Sulpicia. Depending on the severity of torture and blood magic she served you up with, her punishment would leave you with a void that could take weeks to recover from. I doubted he would have the ability to fill the hole Sulpicia left within the Djinn. Given Sulpicia was Hathor's twin, I imagined only The Source with her Creation magics had the means to replace what was taken away.
Not that there was any failing flaw evident in the god before me now, indeed his bright, blessed power eased my troubled conscience, bringing me peace. Chastising myself, I shoved my dubious concerns about Amun-Ra's abilities away and presented a humble apology for my disrespect.
"My Lord, please forgive me. I knew not... to whom I spoke, and yet despite my doubts, you've healed me."
"Rise, Eleazar, you were merely defending whom you serve, my beloved daughter. You have served her well."
I stood, handing the bottle over to Amun-Ra before bowing my head in respect.
"You are gracious and kind, my lord. I thank you for your infinite patience and forgiveness."
The Ankh and staff, which were in his hands only moments before, vanished, leaving them free to take the bottle. He handled it with such care—placing it on his palm before he ran his fingers along the black hieroglyphs carved into the blood red glass. The glyphs seemed to come alive for a moment, but Amun-Ra was unsuccessful at getting them to unlock their secrets, as it remained sealed. The bottle itself was shaped like the head of a lioness—the stopper fashioned like a moon with an asp curled around its southern axis. It was the symbol for Sekhmet—the Warrior Lioness, Sulpicia's forsaken godhead. A pained look tugged the god's mouth into a grim line. His long fingers worried the fragile glass as he spoke low and soft to it in the language he shared with his daughters.
"The despair of this Djinn is crushing. There is a madness present, trying to fill the void created when his love for Hathor was removed, but he keeps pushing it back...I have no idea where he is getting the strength to remain sane. I would never have believed it of him, knowing how much he loved her, but The Djinn remembers absolutely nothing about Hathor, nothing about the love they shared. Sulpicia knew she could never control him unless she wiped all traces of her from his mind." Amun-Ra closed his eyes, grief distorting his features. "The pain and loss emanating from this bottle is...beyond what I expected. Beyond my own powers to correct. Sulpicia didn't just alter his consciousness; she stole a piece of his very soul."
Amun-Ra's face was carved in resolve as he internally weighed options I could not dare guess at. Was he going to take the Djinn to Hathor? Surely, the goddess could heal her lover...
"You will leave the bottle with me, Eleazar, but I must ask you to continue on as bait. You could buy us time if Sulpicia believes you still have the bottle."
"Of course, my Lord; howsoever I can help..."
I expected fear to tighten its strangling hold at the thought of remaining Sulpicia's quarry. After the miracles I witnessed today, and the sweet relief of not having to carry the bottle any further, I felt renewed and ready for war.
"I accept the mission with gratitude, my Lord. I will lead Sulpicia far away from here. She shall never hear of the Djinn's whereabouts from these lips."
Amun-Ra flashed a satisfied smile and turned towards the large golden door leading to The Source's room.
"Come, Eleazar, before you start running again from one daughter, perhaps it's time you met the one you are running for. It is time you met Hathor."
Had I been human, my knees would have knocked with the anxious expectation of being in The Source's divine presence. If only Xandru were here to share this moment with me.
Amun-Ra turned and waved his hand over the gilded doors. Surprisingly, he spoke the incantation in English. Upon hearing it, I understood why,
Ra exalts without ceasing
His heart rejoices when he joins his daughters,
He swims in his firmament, in peace
He turns and takes his course
Forsaking One to protect The Source
The final two lines were the very creed of the Brotherhood, and at one time, used as our "secret password" when there were enough of us to share it. All this time, I thought the creed implied our fraternity's choice of fighting The Forsaken to protect The Source, but it turns out it was but a portion of something else entirely...it was the choice of a father between his daughters.
My heart felt heavy. I could not fathom the difficulty of having to choose sides between your children. I now understood why Amun-Ra had to keep his identity as Hathor's High Priest secret. The scales of justice were considered balanced when Sekhmet's godhead was taken from her and the Djinn was created to protect Hathor. However, when Ra decided to take a more active role in protecting The Source, The Forsaken lost not only her godhead, but the support of her father.
If Sulpicia found out her own father, who was not supposed to interfere, had hidden Hathor from her all of these years, I shuddered, thinking of the malevolence Sulpicia would send his way. Given Ra's magic did not seem to have the teeth his daughter's did, he was quite wise to keep his involvement with the OurosBouros under wraps for so long.
Before us, the doors popped open with a pressurized burst and hiss, fanning slowly inward. What I found beyond the threshold was certainly not the claustrophobic confines of a secret, underground room.
Instead, I discovered no walls in this space; stepping through the door was like entering a portal to a new land. The magical oasis was teeming with vegetation and fauna. Thick trees lined the entryway, spanning to the left and right of us, giving the illusion we were walking out of a forest into a verdant valley. Bees hummed lazily back and forth across wildflowers dotting the plush, carpet-like grass. A lake shimmered and sparkled in the distance, while deer danced over fields to the west towards an isolated grove of mighty oaks. Small rabbits hopped along, stopping here and there to chew at the sweet clover nestled amongst the blades of grass. My amazement piqued when I felt the cool fingertips of a breeze blowing over my skin. Wind? We were deep underground not moments ago. Where was all the natural light coming from? I had to remember this was a sanctuary for a goddess. A goddess of creation at that. She could mutate matter into any form she wished! Everything looked so real because it probably was!
I could not contain the laugh bubbling forth from the joy and wonder I felt being in this magical space. Her space. Her world. It was the Christian equivalent as entering the Pearly Gates to be fully welcomed in the glory of heaven. As the sound of my happy outburst echoed through the small valley, birds startled and flew out of the brush dotted along our path. Amun-Ra indulged me with a smile, but there was no room left for it in his eyes, sadness crowding out any opportunity for joy. How could he not feel joy in this place? He turned and led me towards the lake, his demeanor more solemn.
"My Lord, if you will permit me a question?"
"You have come for answers, Eleazar, yes? It is your prerogative to ask questions."
"You are sad coming into this place. Why?"
Looking at me sideways, his half-smile showed amusement but his tone brokered my respect.
"Nothing like cutting to the heart of the matter, Brother Eleazar?"
"My humble apologies if I've offended..." I stammered clumsily.
With a wave of his hand and a shrug of his shoulders, he put his arms behind his back and focused straight ahead as he seemed to mull over how to respond. We maintained our slow, steady pace towards the lake.
"With only Hathor and I here, I get quite lonely for company, so I shall tell you a story. The whole story. A story of your origins, Eleazar."
"My origins? What would that have to do with your unhappiness in this place?"
"Quite a bit, actually. Oh, don't get me wrong, your race is one of the most amazing and misunderstood creations since the Nephilim, but they are another story entirely. Your story, Eleazar, the story of the Vampire and how they came to be, is one intricately tied with mine. With Hathor's. With...Sulpicia's."
"Well yes, my lord, our kind has served the goddess for years in protecting her from Sulpicia."
"Ahh, yes, your kind has served us well. But it goes back farther than you think, dear Brother. Perhaps I should start at the beginning...with my daughters."
Amun Ra's voice took on a beguiling tone, filled with the charm long used by the infamous bards through the hallows of time, when stories were told by mouth rather than written word.
"As you know, the goddesses, Hathor and Sekhmet, are twins, each a mirror reflection of each other's powers. Sekhmet was the fire that consumed, burning away old growth to make way for new. Hathor was fertility, planting and nurturing new life out of the coals from her sister's razing. When they combined as one, the terrible Eye of Ra, their powers were amplified, but Sekhmet, being a warrior goddess, was hungrier, more dominant in the role as Destructor...Hathor became trapped in the whirlwind of her sister's fury, but not powerless."
From above us, a falcon screeched and Amun Ra paused in his narrative. Suddenly, the bird of prey swooped down into the field ahead of us, a bullet fury of wings and talons, plucking a rabbit out of the clover. The rabbit squealed and struggled, forcing the falcon to land, but the bird was much larger and dominated the bleating animal easily before he ripped off pieces of flesh to gulp them down.
Amun-Ra halted our advance so as not to spook the falcon enjoying his kill, then whispered, "Nature seems so cruel, but the wise man knows out of death comes life."
Eying us, the falcon screeched again, hunching over its prey protectively. With a flap of its wings once, then twice, the bird took off with its broken and bloodied kill between its talons. We watched the bird fly off, probably to feed young. The peaceful picture of the valley resumed, but I noticed the rabbits were no longer in sight. Amun-Ra continued on with his story, leading us towards the lake, as I marveled again at the complexity of this sanctuary.
"Gods are not impervious to the whims of Nature, Eleazar. It is within my nature to be proud. When I exercised prideful cruelty and released The Eye of Ra to hunt down the humans who defied me as a god, thousands died. But what is not known, is the new form of life that came from those deaths. In my shame and guilt of the lives lost, and the irreparable damage it did to my daughters...I removed from the consciousness and records of man a crucial portion of the Eye of Ra legend."
"Why not the entire legend, my Lord? Why not wipe it all away?"
"Oh, it was tempting, Eleazar, but pride was my lesson, and judgment demanded my humility. After all, is not man supposed to learn from the foolish whims of the gods?" He snorted derisively. "You ask me why I am sad, Eleazar. I am sad because a long time ago, I asked of my daughters a terrible thing, and when they combined their powers of Chaos and Creation, Ma'at, the goddess of Judgment taught me a lesson about pride. I was a fool to forget about the demands of Ma'at regarding the necessity of balance." He kicked the dirt like a child caught in a spot of trouble. Quickly he turned on me, desperate to make me understand. "Out of death comes life, Eleazar. It is the unbroken circle. The OurosBouros."
He pointed to the clouds in the vista ahead of us; they began to darken into a steel grey, rolling into a boil, forming the shape of a snake devouring its tail, the symbol of our order. The image hung in perfect detail for a few seconds before pulling apart, lightening in color, returning to the cottony strands of cumulus once more.
"What is not told about the thousands that died from the Eye of Ra's bloody rampage is they rose again. Within the Eye of Ra, Sekhmet's destructive nature reveled in the gutting, bleeding, and feeding from the Eye's victims. Yet, gentle Hathor, remained true to her own nature and found a way to replace death with life! The corpses began to heal from the inside out, changing into something stronger, more beautiful, and more savage than any human or immortal ever to walk the earth. Even more amazing was the fact this new immortal species were able to procreate, through the same manner in which their species found its genesis. Blood-drinking."
"My god, they were the first vampires!"
"I think the correct plea would be, "my goddess," since it is she who is your Creator. Now you see why Hathor is called, The Source, Eleazar. Hathor is the true mother of your race."
I was stunned. So much so, I could not speak. My head could not get above the quicksand of Amun-Ra's shocking revelations.
The vampire race rose from the ashes of destruction caused by the Eye of Ra. We were made from an act of compassion and healing by the Goddess of Creation herself! We were actually created, not cursed—not possessed by demon spirits. We had a benevolent genesis!
Every race along the timeline of history has a story of their beginnings, how they came to be and the gods who made them. Monotheism, Polytheism, the root is the same; legend and myths would say it was so, and their culture evolved in the strengthening and perpetuation of those beliefs through the ages. The vampire race was a melting pot of theosophical beliefs. In crossing over, we desperately clung to our human culture, beliefs, and biases—it was difficult enough to survive the change and the hunger without losing our mind. Losing faith could make or break a vampire. For many of us, our spirituality grounded us, kept us whole in times of soul-stealing depravity.
I thought of my friend, Carlisle; how rare it was for a vampire to reach his level of abstinence and control around human blood. How he struggled, wrestling with his "demonic" hunger, mourning the abandonment of a Christian God, yet consistently applying the morals of a faith he felt annexed from. I felt anger for his suffering. But then I realized, knowing Carlisle as I do, it was the suffering that shaped him, made him stronger. It could have changed the very heart of him if the truth was offered—maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. I'm not sure it is a decision I could make for him. For anyone really.
Despite the comfort I drew from my own convictions, I had to ask Amun-Ra why? I owed it to my race. I owed it to all of the lost souls that suffered with their damnation, especially those that gave in to the darkness without a fight. Though I should have felt anger by the betrayal in robbing us of our evolutionary history, I knew as an OurosBouros Brother, I was devout in the belief The Source was our Mother in the figurative sense, as she was a goddess of Creation. To know it was a literal truth shifted my paradigms, but only slightly.
"How could you leave us without...without our history? Our origins? When I think of the millions born into cavernous depths of despair, feeling shunned from their faith...alone...most believed themselves to be godless abominations. Hathor was the only goddess to come forth and accept us, treat us as beings with a higher purpose. She agreed with your decision to wipe our history from our consciousness?"
"No. In fact, it was a sore point between us. But she did not have time to press the issue, as Hathor was not the only goddess that came forth to claim you."
"Sulpicia?"
"Yes, Eleazar. Sulpicia desired subjugation from your entire race. Had she the power of her godhead as Sekhmet, she would have easily accomplished enslavement of your kind. Hathor realized immediately, the only way she could keep the vampire race from slavery was to keep them from her sister. Hathor and her Djinn lover, Benji, spent a millennium, working covertly to protect your kind from Sulpicia's grip. When Sulpicia joined forces with the Volturi brothers, their Machiavellian manipulations were the beginning of the end for Hathor and Benji's cause to protect your race.
"Soon enough, it was all they could do to save themselves! From the desert temples in Egypt, to the windswept shores of Ireland, after centuries of cat and mouse, Sulpicia finally caught up to her sister on the edges of the Black Sea. Benji sacrificed himself so Hathor could escape. She made her way to me, and has been here in my care ever since."
Amun-Ra was vibrating with emotion, and Benji's bottle began to pulse and stir in response. Remembering himself, he again spoke softly to the spirit within, calming the Djinn. He sighed heavily; defeat and depression danced along the edge of his storytelling, and my heart broke for him. Regret had carved such deep trenches into his soul.
"Don't you understand, Eleazar? At the time, I felt your race was better off with no god to worship and follow into folly. I can never know for sure if it was the right decision, but I could not risk giving Sulpicia the chance to exploit her role in your creation and set herself up as your goddess! I had already risked and lost so much. I had lost the respect of my people. I lost the respect of my pantheon, giving rise to the reign of Isis and Osiris. My foolish, prideful choices resulted in murder of innocents, and placed a wedge between my twin daughters. One is lost to the darkness of black magic while the other is...the other is..."
Amun-Ra was so entrenched in his grief he could not bring himself to finish. Fear gripped my heart. What had happened to Hathor?
A lone tear tracked down his cheek, and so caught up was I with the dramatic diatribe and display of the god's deepest family secrets, I had not noticed we'd come to the banks of the lake.
"The other is...unreachable."
His eyes looked towards the middle of the small lake. There was an island with a modest stone temple hidden amongst the trees. Confused, I pressed the god further. "What do you mean...unreachable?" Was the goddess trapped on the island somehow? Was she cursed as well?
Amun-Ra took a deep and measured breath before he answered.
"When Hathor came to me after Benji's capture, she was so heartbroken; I doubted she would be able to hold on to the material plane. She was withering in her devastation. This temple was the only place I could bring her as it still held enough power to sustain her."
"But the temple wasn't active at the time you would have brought her here..."
"It was not active in the traditional ways with all of its ceremony, but despite being housed by beggars and thieves, most countrymen still believed in the old ways. It was their belief that maintained the power. You heard Jaru during his tour; these temples were astrologically chosen to become amplifiers for the spiritual energy flowing from and to the goddess. In its prime, the temple above us was teeming with energy. People came from long distances to pray in my daughter's temple, to be bathed in the sacred pools, and to receive the medicine and the care they needed, so it's no surprise some residual healing energy remained.
"At first, when Hathor and I came here to seek refuge, she languished in her convalescence for many centuries, cocooned in a deep depression, creating nothing. Sometimes she would play her beloved lyre, songs of such longing and loss, it was all I could do to not rip the instrument from her hands and scream at her to stop. But things did seem so hopeless for us then. Our Priests and Brothers had been slaughtered. Our allies in the Striga and Pricolici scattered to the winds. The situation of the Brotherhood was so dire,we needed a miracle.
"And again, that miracle came to us through the curiosity and adulation of Man, saving us once again from our apathy. Therein was my lesson. We gods need the people more than they need us. General Napoleon Bonaparte rescued our temple from being swallowed by the desert sands, and people came again, not to be healed, but to relearn the language, decipher and cherish the stories written on the walls so many years ago. Imagine the power when the written and spoken words of our people were joined once more! Like a siren song, the translation of the hieroglyphs beckoned the people to come again from long distances. From all the corners of the world they came to walk through her temple and speak of Hathor's legends and her people. This renewed interest in the past brought on a resurgence of energy within the Temple. The people took pictures, touched, retold, and resurrected the stories with their careful rediscovering of our past. They revived the energy that is stored here beneath the ground and healed Hathor enough that she began building this world you see before you. I felt such immeasurable hope for her recovery. But it was short-lived."
"What happened? Was it Sulpicia?"
Amun shook his head, but his face became haunted with grief and regret. He bent down and dipped his cupped hands into the water, and the emotion on his face darkened as he brought the handful of water over to me. I could see images drifting on top of the bare skim of liquid, coalescing into a scene some time ago in this very spot. I saw a woman with raven-black hair kneeling by the lake's edge. Her petite body seemed so laden with sadness, she was literally bowed beneath the weight of it as she cried heavy tears into the water. Amun-Ra appeared and knelt down beside her, wrapping his arm around her slim shoulders.
"My darling Hathor, why do you cry? You have created such a beautiful lake, and have almost finished your haven...Is this cause for tears?"
The goddess was beyond breathtaking, but my heart shattered with the haunted look in her eyes. Her warm amber skin glinted like delicate gold leaf in the sun, sparkling much like the diamond skin our race had inherited. Hathor's rich, violet eyes were streaked with a raging grey storm of loss. Beyond dignity in her pain, the goddess gripped Amun-Ra's robe in a fevered attempt to make him understand her desolation.
"It's becoming impossible to hold it all in. The love, the loss - I can't carry this much pain any longer, Father. I have cried endless tears and this lake now holds all of that pain for me. It holds all of my memories of Benji."
Amun-Ra, clearly horrified, snatched his robe from her desperate grip, stood and backed away from his daughter. Scolding her in frustration, he cut her to the core, "How can you remove memories of Benji after he sacrificed his own to save you?"
Hathor cried harder, the storm in her eyes bled into the lake and whitecaps began whipping across the surface in a frenzied roll and wave. Very much the broken father, the god rushed back to her and dropped to his knees, begging her to stop crying. As he held her, crooning his apologies and empathies, the heartbreak and guilt flashed in his eyes. They told me the inevitable - he would let her go. He could deny her nothing, even if that meant allowing her to empty herself.
The scene broke apart into tiny droplets, seeping through Amun-Ra's fingers and hitting the ground. He wiped the wetness from his hands vigorously on his robes as if they were scalding him.
Imploringly the god whispered, "How could I argue with her? Especially since I was the one who had asked of her to become the Eye, whetting Sekhmet's appetite for power, pitting her beloved twin against her! So I let her go. She waded into the water and swam towards the island.
"After some time passed - I do not know how long, as time moves differently here -I tried to swim to the island, but the water was impossible to traverse. Her memories soaked into my skin, and I felt her love, pain and loss so strongly that I feared I would lose my very sense of self…and I am the god of consciousness!"
I could not believe the azure blue lake before me could cause a god such as Ra so much challenge and pain. The sun glinted like winking fairy lights across its surface, making the body of water appear idyllic. I peered into the water edging the bank. There were no plants or fish swimming beneath the surface, but there were swirling, ghost-like wisps of movement that caught and confounded my eyes. Could these be her memories?
Amun Ra continued, "I went to my brother, Thoth, again for council. He shifted into a falcon and flew to the island to observe Hathor. He said she slumbers but her body fades from the material plane, eroding into a bare mist of physical resemblance."
"Dear Goddess! What is happening to her?"
"Thoth's theory is that she has exiled herself to the Land of Dreams, but she has submerged herself so deeply within that plane, she fades from this one. Soon, she could be lost forever. Isabella is the only one who can reach her now. We waited so long for her, I feared the arrival of The Golden-Eyed Queen would come too late. I must tell you, I made sure for myself she was the one. She is incredibly powerful and pure of heart."
"My Lord? You have met Isabella Swan?"
"Yes. Her and her lover Edward were awaiting Isabella's transformation in the In Between. As you know, Edward's sister is a Seer. His sister saw Edward's death and Isabella demanded answers. She was shaking the very heavens for it. Anyone could have heard her, and perhaps refrained from answering her to perhaps see who would. Should Sulpicia have heard her, and found out...Well, I risked much to give Isabella what I could in the time we had. I think she caught the gist of my vagueness, and I made sure that she saw the name of my boat. If she goggled Mandjet, my name is sure to come up."
"'Goggle' my Lord?"
"Yes, on that technical cyber plane the humans created – the interweb."
"Oh, yes, the internet. I believe the word is Google, my Lord." Amun-Ra rolled his eyes. "You are sure Isabella has enough power to heal the Djinn and reach The Source?"
"Absolutely positive. Isabella is the result of breeding generations of powerful Striga witches. Therefore, she has a natural mastery of all the elements – Fire, Water, Earth and Air. This is Creation magic, but it is also Chaotic magic. She can create as well as destroy. The Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End. Besides Sulpicia, only Isabella has power to temper the Djinn, and perhaps fill in the void Sulpicia left. Isabella can also Dreamwalk like her grandmother, Marie..."
"Therefore giving her the ability to reach Hathor in the dream realm. Brilliant plan, my Lord, but what about Sulpicia? Does Isabella have enough power to...defend herself? Destroy if she has to?"
Amun-Ra considered his answer carefully. Looking out across the water at the island for a moment, he sighed and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"She had no problem destroying the Volturi Army – prior to transformation, no less. Yet, Isabella is at a disadvantage because she has so little information to go on. That is not meant to be an accusation in any form against Xandru or yourself for not preparing her, Eleazar. I hold my part in that error of judgment as well."
I believed him; however, I still could not help feeling the guilt for advising Xandru to not overwhelm the poor woman with the full breadth of her destiny. Inadvertently, I made Isabella's task more difficult.
"Yes, but my Lord, you truly had no choice. Risking our exposure to Sulpicia too soon has been a delicate dance we all have been performing since she eradicated our Brotherhood."
Coldness settled over Amun-Ra at the mention of his daughter's genocide of our Priests and Brotherhood, but I knew seeded deep amongst his resolve for war was the hope for victory.
"Now that we have the Djinn safely in our possession, I can contact Isabella within the privacy of a setting I can better control. I can give her the Djinn to heal, along with all the information she needs to finish her quest."
It seemed like a sound plan, but before I could ask any more questions, a large black snake with a golden head slithered out of the brush to the left of us, heading straight for Amun-Ra's feet. There was something familiar about the large cobra.
Amun-Ra looked surprised and squatted down until he was eye level with the snake as it rose up and swayed as if ready to strike. My instincts screamed to act, but I dared not move should this animal be a friend to the god. They seemed to hold a silent conversation in which Amun-Ra paled while the snake bared its fangs and hissed aggressively. The god looked to the temple across the lake for a moment, then to the bottle in his hands. Tightening his grip, he spoke to the snake out loud.
"Do what you can to keep her at bay. Eleazar and I will resurface as soon as we seal off the entrance."
The snake seemed to nod in agreement, curl up in a ball, and then it was gone.
Alarmed by the change in the god's face, I hurried to question, "What, or who was that? Is something going on above us in the temple?"
"That was Jaru..."
"The tour guide, Jaru?"
Amun-Ra smiled, but instead of sadness crowding the eyes, it was pride. "Jaru, is my faithful and loyal Djinn. I created him over five thousand years ago."
I realized why the snake looked so familiar – it was exactly like the one on Jaru's beautiful staff. Realization hit as to who could shake the god's confidence and my mind spun in the consuming quickening of fear, burning through my insides like acid.
"Goddess and Consort. Sulpicia! She is here."
Amun-Ra nodded his head, his hands flexing into fists. His anger rolled off of him in waves.
"Yes."
"My Lord, I am yours to command. What do we do?"
Handing me the bottle that Sulpicia would murder for, I knew there could be no "we". It was time for me to run and for Amun-Ra to stop running from his wretched daughter.
This was going to be one hell of a family reunion.
End notes
On the propylons of the Temple of Hathor on the island of Philae is this inscription:
"Ra exalts without ceasing
His heart rejoices when he joins his daughter,
He swims in his firmament, in peace
He turns and takes his course"
I used it in this story to suit my needs and ever lasting love for research. But I must give credit where credit is due. I didn't write it!
If anyone has any questions at all, please feel free to PM me or send them in a review.