Two Eyes Cenote lead

a school.

samples of dried medicines stood lined neatly on stone shelves. organized piles of skin-cloth sat here and there. tavina was still sorting through the bones for another platform.

and on the third, she decided she would show anatomical demonstrations, separating the parts of one prey-body or another.

fragrant leaves scattered colorfully upon the cool floor, and the desert wind brought with it the hot scent of flowers as it whirled down khamsin into the corridors.

and tavina smiled, just once.

“I saw that.”

Eset teases from the archway, a lift of levity in her brow. She enters the room with a spread of palm leaves and takes up scrubbing the veined stone floors while Tavina assembles her stations. She felt between them both the hunger for ritual kept thoughts from darker emotions, yet still at moments her mind was wildly defiant.

She’d no idea what to do with Machiavelli’s entrapment. With Zaahira’s despondent letter. Or how to get the burning pull of Akavir's novel fire eyes out of the front of her mind.

Most preciously there was a life stirring within her belly, one who needed their mother to be strong for them.

Mother. Her mouth dimples with concurrent anxiety and emotion, strong enough to be seen in her reflection as she washes the sandstone.

She felt alone. She wished desperately to confide in Tavina. But she felt a severe fool.

What did she think was going to happen? She’d return as hebsut to Muat-riya and raise a child by herself? How was she to explain her pregnancy- that seeds on the khamsin had impregnated her? How was she to make such a confession to Tavina, who wept for her wife and the loss of her own children?

Eset felt like the last woman on earth who had never known love. She did not know if it made her lucky- or cursed.

“How did you meet Nala?” She asks softly, lifting her eyes from her work to gaze up into Tavina’s.

a new smile had come to her, one that struggled to stay genuine on her mouth as eset asked something tavina had not contemplated in a long while. a swallow limned her throat, but her expression warmed in shades of vulnerability.

"we just ran into each other, really," tavina said, leaning against one of the stone uprights. her eyes fell to the palm leaves. "there's a creek north of here. i was gathering things and she asked me about them. i thought her laugh was beautiful."

she needed something, anything to do. tavina began to sort lavender again. "she told me a story. we parted ways for a while, and when she came back, she said it was for me."

her heart lay as open as that of a rabbit's on the stone slab.

"the rest is — well."

why did you ask me that?

a third time for the lavender.

The coywolf stills, dustsmocked paws setting aside her palms to watch Tavina’s shades of deep lilac abandon their guard. There is recollection in her face and a delicate warmth that lit up the little underground room. The hebsut listens, her throat opening and bowing like a pensive dove. It seemed the most sincere and simple thing, to fall in love with a laugh.

“Did you know, then? That you were in love with her?” She pursues, kneeling there in the shadows, eyes seeking for- answers. Only then does she see the ceaselessly worked harvest of lavender and stiffen at the gall of her questioning.

“I’ve overstepped,” Eset amends, moving quickly to Tavina’s side to still the hand with a brace of her own. She wanted to know more- everything- but she couldn’t risk upsetting what felt like a fragile happiness.

"you haven't," tavina's voice moved to reassure, seeking eset's eye. "i knew that i loved her then. it was easy to love nala. how couldn't i?"

in the telling, her own eyes sought away as they stung, but she did not touch the lavender again, its crushed scent rising between them. "i don't know what i'd do if she came walking in our doors, eset. i'm — sometimes i fear i'll be so angry i'll be undone."

Easy to love. Eset would never be that.

When Tavina’s glance pulls her way, the coy’s eyes instead seek the strands of fretted flora, “she sounds beautiful.” She steps away, out from the fragrance of lavender, returning to the stacks of palm.

It pained her inexplicably to hear the sesh’s grief. She wanted Tavina’s happiness. She wanted to hear her laugh, and there was a shattering thought that it may never come again.

“Is it so wrong to be angry when you've reason to be?” Eset's gaze did meet her’s then, a sheer glimmer over the pyretic amber. Perhaps her eyes were only glass to reveal all the spinning wheels of wrath she herself harbored, and vowed to let loose one day. And maybe in her own secret depths she reserved resentment in her heart, too, for Nala.

"she was, and it is." she swept the lavender at last into three formal piles and began to put them away in wrappings of soft hide. "i don't believe she would have left of her own accord. how could i bear her anger if she's been kept from m — from her home?"

a world-weary wound opened within the royal hue of her dismal eyes, all-seeing and stricken; "perhaps the cure is to no longer speak of her." eset's paw, a touch given, a sigh, a shake of her head as if to throw off cobwebs.

tavina wiped the slate of her expression and sighed. "i imagine pharaoh will be holding another celebration before wintertime arrives. perhaps even fall. i think i'd like the children to give a presentation for her at that time, a summary of what they've learned at our school."

She looks down at their hands. “That is no cure,” and Tavina knows this.

The sesh goes on to talk about the students; a presentation. The hebsut listens, nodding absently, falling to taciturn silence.

Nala may very well be alive and fighting to get back to Akashingo. It is what the sesh wants, and she is someone Eset cares for immensely. So why does the thought maim her so?

When Nala returns, this school will be theirs. It is their dream, afterall. Tavina will be ensnared by her laugh. And if she was here in this room right now, she’d be holding her hand.

“I pray she is returned to you one day.” I pray she never comes back. “And you will be happy again.”

I am a hateful, loveless, vile woman. Bile swells in her throat and she swallows it quickly down, reaching for a leaf and intending to scrub the floors until her knuckles bled.

"i am happy now, eset."

she moved to interfere, to take the hebsut's hand before it was bent in service again. "i am happy, and i am so unhappy. both exist. both — they are me, now, i think."

she could not say it! but tavina had ceased knowing if she even wanted nala to come back, not when it had been so long.

"i want to exist in the present, not wander the past."

Tavina’s gentled touch is there again, and this time it is Eset who pauses, neck raised to look up into celestial depths, silently gathering what the doctor would tell.

Her eyes spoke that she wished to do as the sesh did, to exist for the day. But the present was built upon the past, even if they could no longer see it.

“Do you think one is all we get?” Her mouth firms, copper face rending in ornate question.

“One great love.”

"no."

their breath was mingling; their gazes moreso. "i think i am too cowardly to find the next is all."

paw tightening around that of eset's own; she looked down at the hardworking hand which still kept its delicate arches.

"do you think cowardice is something that can be overcome?"

her face reflected the same questing tear.

The room is thrown into utter silence save their breaths. The sesh’s gaze is followed to the overlap of paw. The coy stiffens, suddenly so aware of her pulse in this room.

“I think– I’d rather make myself a fool than a coward,” Eset whispers finally, lips lingering apart, brow lifting in accordance with the last. Her eyes skip between Tavina’s and down to the mouth which had shaped the question.

The secret child’s blood, or otherwise her own thrums; restless, biting, hot.

She swallows, down and away with her eyes and pitches to her feet.

“I will go fetch more palms,” she makes for the door.