~#~ Chapter 2 ~#~

Kayan turned out to be a spunky little creature who immediately became a fully-fledged member of the household. Kaveh introduced her to the pair of desert foxes when they came back in for their dinner and found that, despite a brief moment of hissing and spitting from Kayan, they accepted each other surprisingly easily.

~#~

The next morning, when Alhaitham ambled into the kitchen, he found that Kaveh was already up and about. While it wasn't unusual for the architect to be up before him, what was clearly obvious was that Kaveh had either stayed up much later than him or had got up at some ungodly hour that morning. Alhaitham's belt pouch and cape were hung on improvised washing lines that were strung across the kitchen and his boots were in a bucket in the corner of the room.

The contents of Alhaitham's belt pouch had been carefully collected together in a small box on the table and Kaveh pointed at it as he bustled into the room. "Everything in there is fine. The pouch is mainly done, but the blue side needs a bit more attention before you can wear it again. Same with the cape, it's mostly there but not quite. I'm going to have to admit defeat with the boots though, the water's done a job on them, and they're never going to be the same again."

Alhaitham nodded. "Understood," he replied quietly. "But Kaveh, you didn't have to do all this. Just how long have you been up?"

"Um," Kaveh shrugged. "I don't know, it was just past five and I couldn't sleep so I thought I'd do something useful. I really hoped I'd be able to save your boots."

Alhaitham patted his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. You tried. Most people wouldn't have bothered but, honestly, I wouldn't have expected anything else from you. Now, however, you are going to sit and eat breakfast with me, I'm assuming you haven't eaten yet?"

"Not yet," Kaveh shook his head. "Stay there, I'll be back in a minute."

~#~

Kaveh returned a moment later with Kayan cuddled against his chest. He sat with her while Alhaitham set the table and then put her in her box which he'd left beneath the window. "I didn't want to risk her getting lost when the foxes went out," he explained. "She's following them everywhere but she's too little to go out just yet."

"She was born out," Alhaitham chuckled as he pushed a plateful of toast towards Kaveh. "But I know what you mean. She's not particularly sizeable."

An amiable silence fell over the kitchen as the two men ate their breakfast. Kaveh quietly munched his way through the plate of toast and didn't even comment about the extra piece that Alhaitham added, just before he ran out.

Once he was finished, Kaveh picked the kitten out of her box and sat back at the table, petting her. "So, apart from being wet and smelly, were there any redeeming factors to your trip yesterday? That little sigil looks interesting."

Alhaitham rummaged in the box containing the contents of his belt pouch. "That and…ah, there you are, this." He slid a shiny, silver disk towards Kaveh. "I have no idea what that is. The symbols make no sense, in any language I understand, and they're vastly different to those on the sigil, which I found in the same room." He slid the little hexagonal stone sigil across the table until it was sitting beside the disk.

Kaveh peered down at the disk and then picked up the sigil and held it into the light flooding through the window. "Oh, I recognise that," he replied. "That's…"

"Ancient Deshret," Alhaitham finished. "But this…" he picked up the disk and frowned at it, "…isn't. It's obviously…something, but I don't know what. I'm going to head to the Akademiya later and find out."

~#~

Alhaitham failed to work out what the disk was and returned home feeling tired and out of sorts. He dropped the disk onto the coffee table and slumped unhappily onto his couch staring at it. Kaveh rolled his eyes at him and then reached over and dropped Kayan onto his chest. Alhaitham instinctively reached up to support the kitten and stroked her head gently. He could feel Kaveh's eyes on him and looked up to meet the architect's amused gaze. "Shut up," he grumbled affectionately.

~#~

"It's only a temporary problem. We're just looking in the wrong place." Kaveh had been listening to the same, or very similar, grumblings from Alhaitham for almost a week. The silver disk, which Alhaitham had taken to calling a coin, had pretty much defied all investigations as to its origins. Kaveh had taken to going into the Akademiya with him each morning to help research what the symbols on the coin meant. The nearest either of them managed to come up with, late in the week, was a vague similarity to a barely-known ancient text which had been discovered on a stone tablet, buried within a robbed-out pyramid deep within the Sumerian desert. They only managed to translate a few of the symbols using the tablet and, worryingly, these came out as the words 'curse', 'echoes' and 'madness'.

Kaveh shuddered when Alhaitham wrote the last word in his notepad. "I think that's your cue to let it go," he said softly. "That's…way too creepy."

Alhaitham chuckled. "They're only words, Kaveh. Words to scare away the weak-minded, or the weak-willed. We've got the basis of something to work with now. Gods, this would have gone so much quicker if the Akasha had still been running but…" He picked up the coin, tucked it into his breast pocket for safekeeping and shrugged.

"Well, it isn't and that's a good thing," Kaveh finished for him. "Now, I've got food shopping to do. Are you coming or staying?"

Alhaitham shook his head. "Staying," he replied gruffly. "I have got actual work that I need to get done but I won't stay late."

Kaveh rose from his chair and rested his hand on the scribe's shoulder. "I'll hold you to that." He gave the shoulder a gentle squeeze before turning and wandering away without looking back. Alhaitham reluctantly clambered to his feet and headed towards his office where he remained until it was time to head home.

~#~

Dinner was simmering on the hob when Alhaitham stepped back into the house. Kaveh was nowhere to be seen but soon appeared from his studio with a small sheaf of paper in his hands. He handed one to Alhaitham. "What do you think?" he asked quietly. "It's only from memory but I think I've got the symbols correct."

On the paper was a scaled-up picture of the coin with small annotations down the sides and their rough translations along the bottom. Alhaitham put the paper on the table and pulled the coin out of his pocket to compare with the drawing. "That's really quite good," he said softly and then let out an amused snort as he pointed to the words across the top of the paper. "We're calling it the enigma coin now, are we?"

Kaveh shrugged. "It fits, doesn't it? The damn thing defies all efforts to explain it and throws up more questions than answers when you try. Enigma. Feel free to come up with something better if you don't like it."

~#~

The next week or so turned out to be pretty routine. Alhaitham went to work at the Akademiya like normal and Kaveh took on a small commission near to Aru village. Unfortunately, as was often the way, he ended up at loggerheads with the commissionaire and ended up stomping back to the house on the third day, upset and in a foul mood. Alhaitham came home that evening to find him sprawled backwards on the couch with the kitten fast asleep on his chest, one of the foxes draped across his neck and the other curled up in his lap.

~#~

Alhaitham had never liked the hustle and bustle of the bazaar and had no idea why he'd let Kaveh persuade him to go with him as he stood silently beside one of the stalls watching Kaveh cheerfully haggle with the stallholder. He would never admit it but he'd been feeling slightly under the weather for a couple of days. He couldn't pin it down to anything in particular but he hadn't been sleeping well, had a near-constant low-level headache and his ears seemed to be more sensitive than normal. He'd had to turn his sound-deadening headphones up several times since getting out of bed the previous morning and yet he found that he was still experiencing random sounds that were starting to grate on him.

After being disturbed by the second particularly frustrating noise in as many minutes Alhaitham reached up and smacked the headphone covering his right ear. This had the opposite effect to what he wanted as the noise of the hit was amplified straight back into his ear and, in search of some relief, he lifted the whole thing off his head and rubbed his ear before settling the headphones carefully back in place. The motion inadvertently pulled Kaveh's attention away from the stallholder and Alhaitham gave him a pained expression before turning and fleeing from the market.

It took a moment for Kaveh to react and by the time he'd made his excuses to the various people who called out to him, Alhaitham was nowhere to be seen.

Kaveh headed back to the house, pushed the front door open, stepped through and closed it quietly behind himself. He paused for a moment and listened for any sign of where Alhaitham had ended up. The house was mostly silent apart from a soft scratching noise coming from the direction of the sitting room. Kaveh toed off his shoes, padded softly across the carpet and stopped at the door when he spotted Alhaitham hunched over on his couch. The scribe had his headphones in pieces on the table in front of him and he had a pinched expression on his face, a clear sign that he was sporting one hell of a headache.

"Hey," Kaveh's whisper was barely audible but Alhaitham still flinched, so he immediately switched to signing instead. Many years before he'd come to realise that there were days when Alhaitham simply couldn't cope with even the slightest of noises, in the same way that other times he couldn't handle physical contact of any description. These were just a couple of the scribe's peculiarities that Kaveh had become accustomed to over the years and he had simply learnt to cope with them. He had taught himself sign language, knowing that it was also one of the many languages that Alhaitham was fluent in, and often found himself running interference between Alhaitham and other people on days when his housemate was struggling. "What's wrong?" he signed. "Headache?"

Alhaitham squeezed his eyes shut as he pinched the bridge of his nose and then looked up at Kaveh and nodded. "Broken," he signed and then flicked the headphones over in frustration, immediately clapping his hands over his ears as they landed back on the table with a loud clatter.

Kaveh held a finger up to stop him and then hurried through to the kitchen. He returned a moment later with two small tablets and a glass of water. He peeled Alhaitham's right hand from his head and forced him to grip the glass and then did the same with his left hand but this time deposited the tablets in his palm. "Take them," he signed. "And go to bed. I will check on you soon."

Alhaitham stared at the tablets for a moment and then glanced at Kaveh who gave him an encouraging smile. A moment later he popped both tablets in his mouth, took a large swig of water and let out a full body shudder.

"Thank you," Kaveh gave him another small smile and then pointed towards the sitting room door. "Now, please, go to bed."

~#~

It took Kaveh a while to put the headphones back together. He put them on to test them and frowned when he realised just how much of the outside world Alhaitham blocked out on a daily basis. He knew, without a doubt, that Alhaitham could hear him when he spoke as it was only very rarely that the scribe didn't respond to even the quietest of words and, even then, it was usually because he chose not to reply, rather than that he hadn't heard what had been said.

Kaveh crept quietly into Alhaitham's room with the headphones and stopped dead. He had expected to find Alhaitham awake and sheltering in place but the scribe had taken him literally and had actually gone to bed. He was flat on his front with his arms outstretched under the pillows beneath his head. He was covered up to his waist and appeared to be deeply asleep even though his face still held a pained expression which told Kaveh that the tablets hadn't been entirely effective.

Kaveh eventually decided to leave the headphones on Alhaitham's second pillow where the scribe would be sure to see them when he woke up. He then crept back out of the room and spent the rest of the afternoon with only the animals for company.

Alhaitham finally emerged from his room just after Kaveh had finished washing up after his dinner. His headphones were safely in place as he dropped heavily onto one of the kitchen chairs and closed his eyes before holding out his left hand. Kaveh glanced at the clock and then silently reached out to drop another couple of tablets into the scribe's outstretched hand. He took the glass that Alhaitham had used earlier, off the draining board, rinsed it out and then filled it with fresh water and tapped it against the scribe's hand.

Once Alhaitham had taken the tablets with a sip of the water, he pressed the cold glass against his forehead and sat there, breathing deeply. Kaveh was unable to sign to him while his eyes were closed and didn't want to risk speaking in case it made his headache worse so simply sat himself down on the opposite side of the table and waited.

~#~

The two men spent the rest of the evening in companionable silence. Kaveh put together a simple meal of meat, bread and cheese for Alhaitham who managed to eat most of it before moving into the sitting room and eventually falling back to sleep on his couch.

Kaveh covered him with a blanket and left him where he was. He wandered into his room, got ready for bed and then dragged his bedcovers out into the sitting room and settled down on his own couch in case Alhaitham needed him during the night.