for
@Inji and for your reference
@Tuna <3 (you are welcome to hop in at any point!)
In the small underground concourse that joins all their chambers, Eset calls for a meeting with the servants of Akashingo. Tuna, Inji, Sayf, and even late Pharaoh’s vizier, if the small master’s time could be spared, along with medjay Bayek.
On the floor she spreads out the blueprint. She had worked on it all night, first studying the base design represented in the reliefs of the palace, then sketching until the draft was close enough to what she’d envisioned for her goddess. She’d made some alterations, mostly visual, to refine the elegant shape to match Toula’s femininity, and added a papyrus canopy to stave the necessity of individual fans. The result was simple and polished, and once painted would make it known to anyone who should look upon their Queen:
That she is Egypt.
“Thank you all for coming. The Erpa-ha has made a request of the fellahin, that our Queen arrives to her summer palace by way of litter,” she indicates with a paw to the drawing.
“Tuna and Sayf, I will ask you to scout for the appropriate wood; acacia for the frame, and sycamore for the base. When you have found it, we will all help to haul and carve.”
And then to the pale girl, “Inji, you and I will gather a suitable amount of silt, the kind with the crimson pigment just off the mesa. We’ll bring a store of it and will bind it with water for paint.” Red accents. A part of herself in the design, too.
She turns to the vizier and the medjay, bowing respectfully, “Your eye will help us oversee the build, to ensure its quality and suitability is apt for the Queen. Thank you, my Lords.”
For any questions, she looks now.
Eset calls and Inji is quick to follow, drifting into the concourse on stilted legs, tail swishing at her ankles. She settles into the crowd and comes to a polite sit.
The
erpa-ha has orders. A litter?
As Eset details the plan, Inji finds herself more and more lost on it and the culture shock had never been so blatant. But she nods swiftly anyway, hiding her malcontent with wide eyes and idle fidgets with the
feather at her ear. Silt. Okay, she was to help gather silt. She could do that! That was simple enough!
So with a flash of a hopeful smile, she awaits further direction; somehow without getting her own word in.
His scent is around in the air, and with the red furs melding upon Inji like embers. His hand is at her own neck. It is a taunt, as if to lay claim to all the fellahin. To wrench away their sisterhood. And enough. She is not some animal without her own command, and to Inji’s eyes now she pivots, noting the uncertainty there.
To her side she comes with gentleness. “Our task is the easiest,” her sly grin admits, “but we will remain near the palace- in case the Queen has immediate need of us.”
The day was gusty which kept heat off their pelts, but might make it difficult to gather the needed pigment. It took Khusobek’s smell from Inji’s flank and flared along the inside of Eset’s nose. She dislodged it with a breath and centered her eyes then over the ashen girl.
“How are you, Inji?”
Frankly, Inji felt herself just happy to be included. Heat singed her back as the pair made their way out of the palace walls and into the open. When was the last time she'd been out here? Her eyes squint as she scans the flatland, the pale rocksands and drybrush just beyond the mesa.
Something felt off about Eset today; but the circumstances of which she simply could not put a finger on. She was not dumb, per se, but rather oblivious — oblivious to any ulterior Khusobek might hold with her, and unknowing of Eset's involvement with him.
It was just for fun, wasn't it? It was their job, a title both of them held!
I'm fine, I think,
her lashes flutter as her gaze finds that of Eset while they walk, tail swishing at her heels. how are you?
“Worried,” her look is firm but her brows fold, “for Toula. And for us,” she confides. How the summer palace might divide their kingdom. How Pharaoh could.
“I like our home. I do not wish for it to change. Though I understand it must.” They were protected here, the Queen, and her fellahin, and Eset had welded herself to its red foundation.
She pushes into a light trot as they descend into the flatlands. “We’re looking for ochre clay,” she tests a little scratch in the ground with her foot before carrying on.
Worried. Eset was worried.
In that was all the confirmation of safety that she apparently needed, because instantly, her eyes glaze with silent tears and her shoulders slump as she comes to an abrupt stop.
I'm scared,
and this was something that would only be spoken in secret to Eset, to the fellahin, to those who formed the backbone of this palace. There was honesty, an outpour of it, as she desperately seeks the haze of Eset's eyes. Khusobek thinks I should... charm them. To be favored by them. A-and I like my job, I do, I'm fine, and I don't think the Queen would jeopardize us or our safety,
she decides to lean down in search of the warm brown shade of earth they sought; a distraction, something to do with her hands. Yes, that's what she needed.
But.
but I don't really trust them. The princes. With myself-- us, or her.
She knew nothing to say to sweeten tears, and this she despised most of all. Gently she coaxes the wolven girl into the space beneath her cheek and against her chest, holding her firmly as if to set her into Eset’s own fur. Something between them that could be solid.
“It is a volatile game,” one she did not wish for the girl to play if she did not need to. “It is not necessarily a bad thing to be favored. It comes with luxuries and liberties- though at the cost of others.”
Guilt sawed at her. She did not want Inji to feel like a sitting duck. “Queen Toula has promised nothing will change in regards to what we’re offered here,” she raises darkened ears with some small hope, intending to share what she had of it with Inji.
She allows herself to sink into the embrace, narrow muzzle pressed to the bony crux of Eset's shoulder, pulse singing in her ears. A breath comes shakily from between her lips. I don't want to do something that would hurt you or Tuna.
Minya had been nothing like this, and for a moment, Inji misses it. There was no bartering or bribery to be done within the savannahs; no caste, only work where it was found. Work that bought you food, a bed to sleep in — and what was to be made of work that could bring you power?
Power that you're not sure if you even want?
I hope you're right,
she sniffles, reaching one foreleg up to wrap tight around the dusty shoulder of Eset. I don't want to lose this.
Eset, herself, her Queen, her life as she knows it; any of it.
All the servile afforded was a little despair, it was a default. But the fellahin of Akahsingo had faith, and Eset the good grace of Hathor. They were not to decay with fear of what may never come.
“You won't. And I am not going anywhere,” it was her own pledge. The Queen would protect them. Eset would protect Inji. “Tonight we will pray together for Queen Toula.”
And a few inches down from their paws, a flicker of red soil under flat stone. She uncrosses their bodies to kick fragments of rock away revealing the clay for their harvest.
i'm the worst i'm so sorry this is so late ;_; my muse has been struggling
Eset wasn't going anywhere, nor was Inji; at least, she hoped neither of them would have to. Okay,
and she affirms this to herself as much as she does for Eset, for friendship, for some form of sickly sisterhood that could be scraped from the bottom of this frightening situation.
This is, um, a stupid question,
blinking back the tears, she begrudgingly peels herself away from the rawboned limbs of Eset. She spots the red soil swept up from between the rubble, and her head tilts. but how do we... get the silt?
She leans down to snuffle at it, which, in turn, blows away a dusting of the ugly sad dirt that was not needed. Do we, like, carry it in our mouths? Or something?
no worries at all!
Eset had lived with a tenuous grasp on her own existence for far too long, spent too many of her days averting eyes and awaiting fate. Now the Queen herself has empowered her handmaids, and if they were to spin tricks for some future pharaoh, then let it be in their own favor.
Despite the weight of their conversation she laughs- how are they going to carry the silt?
“Let’s dig it out, then we can fetch something woven from the palace to transport it,” she suggests and sinks her wrists into the earth.
Okay, okay, um,
digging had, somehow, given the fact that she is in fact a canid, never been her specialty. She wriggles herself lower to the ground before reaching her own paws down in unison with those of Eset, scratching gingerly but rather haphazardly at the surrounding dirt. how much of this did we need, again?
She pauses to shake the dust from her coat, letting out a woop noise. It's pretty on its own, but what if we, like, dye it somehow? Maybe with some flowers?
her eyebrows knit in thought. We could add accents to match the Queen's eyes! We could get some... blue flowers, and dilute it with white. And maybe some gold in there too.
oh, yes, the creative ideas are flowing!
“We’ll need a fair amount,” her voice grunts while straining her feet into the hardened clay.
Inji shares her creativity and therein lies so much beauty. Art itself is a form of expression, a way to share ideas with the world, even something so subtle as peripheral marks on the side of a Queen’s litter that perhaps none would look at. But Eset and Inji would, and recall the time and craft that went into their design.
“Red and blue, teal and gold. We’ll have it all,” she laughs again, Inji’s mind brightening the harried edge of her own.