Hideaway Strath linen

mosses beach

the heat should have enlivened pharaoh, but this was not the climate of his birth. a soupy, horrid clinging in the air, nightmarish stuff that kept him awake and in a bad humour.
at the day's peak, ramesses lay sullenly in the shallows, chin resting on the cool moss that still held a good deal of water. he did not hunt. he did not speak. he only existed there, communing with Amun in angry, silent words.

she saw the man where he waited beneath the sun.

satsu carried nichibotsu with her; she had hoped to pluck them early enough to watch them open. the heat of the day had sucked the moisture from them quickly and left them ruined.

regardless, she carried these three wilting flowers. seeking a jizo as if she were home again. a place to lay them and to think fondly of those that were gone.

no such place existed among the people of this place. finding the man first, she sought out the basking form and settled nearby to him — taking care to place each flower down where the sun could not touch them.

why should i not go?
Amun frowned.
I have brought you here for a greater purpose, pharaoh. you were taught humility. now you will be taught —
the silence in ramesses' mind falling as satsu came near, melting from the heat-stricken forest as if she had always known its shadows. she folded herself gracefully down, and from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of fiery silken petals.
"so."
the man's shoulders shifted beneath the sun-warmed surface. "you have an eye for lovely things."
just like any other woman, but against satsu's solid stature and the honed way in which she moved, these objects seemed mere decoration.
"i did not give you my name. i heard nyra speak your own." he did not offer its bauble, not yet.

of her collection, the longest stemmed would have been for tsujiya; the largest bloom for morohe, the last for kikyo. she arranged them as she thought it over. pausing minutely when the man spoke.
he drew her attention easily.
so far, he seemed the only ally that she had found among the rabble. though she did not look up from her flowers—working to pluck the worst of the dry pieces away.
yes, she had not noticed at the time, distracted by the arrival of the woman so abruptly.
how surprising that a giant can move so quietly. she went on, feigning greater interest in her work.

churlish show of his teeth in a grin. he lay his face more securely against the moss. "i expect her to appear even now."
he watched satsu pull at the flowers. what sort of crafting did she have in store for the well-groomed blossoms? at court, at times, servants had spread the floorlines with desert flowers, crushed under-heel by dancers.
"i am pharaoh," ramesses said calmly, flicking lapis gaze up toward her own. "tell me how you learned to dance, satsu."
tasting her name as if it were pomegranate wine, entitled to its very sound though the quiet woman had not given it.

she did not see the look on his face, but she heard the tone. the sentiment was shared between them. he was bold to speak so openly; satsu meanwhile, was too nervous to draw any such attention.
pharaoh surprised her with his question and it brought a pause to her antics. she looked over the flowers and the pile of detritus pulled free of them, thinking of an answer.
it was my mother's wish.
when i was a girl i would fight with my brothers. always racing them around my father's han, climbing on things... trying to beat them at their games, a curl of her mouth in to a soft smile, sorrow held at a distance. and so she insisted i be taught to dance the way she was.
the smile lingered only a beat, vanishing with a breath.
i did not like it at first; that my brothers could learn the art of war while i... no; she spoke too much of things not present, which could not be changed. pharaoh did not need the details.
she shakes her head.
i honor them by dancing. and that was what mattered.

for once, he listened. a pallor of memory; mother's word transitioning to a rein upon the girl's future. separated by gender, and soon by rank, pharaoh imagined. a world not so different than his own, though he saw it now from a new side.
the water licked around his ivoried figure again. the fragrance of the cuttings held pleasantly in the fetid air. 
"it is intriguing to see what one might do to honor their family. i became a captain in my father's guard. but i am no soldier."
a stirring of his tail against the shallows; ramesses was sodden, heavy. "will you dance to honor our divine ones?" he grinned, a teasing light rising in his lazuli gaze.

curious; he did not have the same hardiness as the strath wolves, yet to be made a guard in his father's army was a respectable position. satsu would have coveted such a role herself before the fall of the han; before she knew the value of familial loyalty.
in the next breath pharaoh brings to mind the daimyo; or that's who satsu envisions when the title of the divine passes his lips. there is humor in his voice. all that satsu can sense in herself is uncertainty and the bottomless drop of her insides.
the thought of kyn-dono watching her in his unabashed way makes her tremble.
if i am asked. satsu pledges softly, though her sudden withdrawal unto herself speaks volumes.
what would her mother think, then?

"my father enjoyed the dancers." ramesses lifted a paw from the waters, examining the way that it streamed from his claws. "if he took a particular liking to one, he invited her to our home for a time. he bestowed his favour upon her."
the glint in his eyes filled the space where details must reside. how many bastards had seti thrown? how many illegitimate sons now old enough to bring forces against hatshepsuun? and she, ready to be deposed for the simple fact that her brother had been exiled and could sire no god-blooded son to take the throne after they both had passed.
"kynareth has the same appetites." dance before him; dance below him. was this what satsu wished?
ramesses saw in her now not the careful air of a warrior, but the shrinking reticence of one made to serve them.

satsu was aware of how men could be; their varied appetites were topics of conversation among the boys as she had grown, then manifested in to truths after her escape and subsequent survival.

though she was fortunate to avoid being the prey—she thought of the many women now who had not been so lucky.

the kutsuwa came to mind; but by then ramesses was speaking again.

kynareth; with his wandering eye and not so secret lusts.
If you are loyal to me, then I am to you. *

i doubt i could hold the lord's interest— it was hard to step back from the thought that now sat presently in mind: kynareth close, breath hot against her neck; her face soon rivals the crimson of the flowers beside her.

he has his eye on others. she hoped.

ramesses laughed aloud at this, and haughtily. at last he pulled himself from the ingratiating waters, allowing it to flow from him in a deluge. "he is not a man who is used to being denied," pharaoh pointed out, slumping to one pale hip as he began to groom himself before satsu's small voice.
the lord. divine one. titles given with nothing behind them. pharaoh let his bluestone gaze flicker temptingly over the blushing dancer, wetting his mouth behind the sly grin.
ramesses thought now of the women he had known through these years, and how he remembered not a single name from among them. perhaps that was always how it must be.
"our grandmaster enjoys pretty things." by know pharaoh assumed that the brindled man had been given, and taken, the full run of the saints' ranks. ramesses could deny, but satsu — she did not strike him as one who would give resistance if granted an order.
he looked toward the dancer, droplets collected upon his chin.

his laughter gathered and boomed, thunderous; she did not like to be subjected to the brunt of his mirth but knew it had been her own doing, in entertaining the conversation so far as she did.

our grandmaster enjoys pretty things.
and ugliness too, she thought.

satsu distractedly looked away from her flowers and in to the waiting face of pharaoh, where she presumed to witness the same hungry look as the lord so oft carried.
her imagination, she reasoned.
i am not a thing, the girl responded cooly, to no effect.

before, perhaps she could have claimed more of herself. without the power of her father what was she now, but something desperate, to be passed from place to place until her life was spent?

ramesses stared down the pristine bridge of his muzzle at satsu. "does that matter? not to someone who wishes to possess. even now, he and nyra seek to expand their hold in these lands."
proud; "i do not answer orders. commands. but you have said you will. where will your heeding stop?"
another woman foolish to the ways of men. she would be used by silver tongues if she did not become hard. brook had been terrified. he saw none of that horror in satsu, but he did not know yet the limits of her strength.
"he tells me he wants to kill and to raid. to take. to shed blood, only for the pleasure of it."
a pause.
"i will not fight his battles."

satsu wished she could emulate the stoicism of her father in that moment. instead as tension weaves shut her jaw, her eyes drop.

the conversation shifts from one appetite to another.

he is the daimyo and we are his subjects— as if that should mean anything. kynareth had his army. his people were like-minded, bestial things. eager for the bloodshed and the war that would come in following the tiger lord.

i will not fight his battles. which comes as little surprise to satsu; but still she finds herself agitated, knowing that she is not strong enough to contend with the hungers of such a man.

then what are you doing here?
the same could be asked of her. satsu's anger is not entirely for pharaoh alone, but herself as well.

"my gods led me here so that i might learn humility." his turn to rankle. "i am no subject. i am pharaoh. He Who Turns the Sky to Gold. He Who Walks with Amun's favour."
satsu might choose to be a servant, but ramesses did not. "one king does not serve another, no matter how strong his army." the sneer transformed into something smoother, more appraising.
"i have offered to become his scribe. keep their lore. scribes do not enter battle," and here he grinned again, amused at himself and his wittiness. 
was that frustration beneath her cultivated veneer. "do not be the lovely dust through which kynareth works his purpose. demand a rank among his fighters. or seek out the women. perhaps they know things i do not. perhaps he is a gentle lover." leaving satsu to her fate, he supposed, chuckling again as he stepped beyond she and her flowers.
"come to me when you have decided if you will be soft or if you will grow the teeth of a jackal."

he had much to say; some of which was of value, most of which she thought, he said only to hear himself.
titles layered upon titles, none which meant anything. his arrogance was boundless and satsu did not know which she favored more: this, or the leering of the daimyo. at least kynareth did not oversell himself.

aiyaa! the man was right though. frustration clouded her now, made her an ugly thing. the calm of their conversation was lost and pharaoh did not deign to wade through the murk of it, now that his business by the water was concluded.

come find me when you have decided.
and so he would go, leaving satsu with her wilted gifts which had, until now, been forgotten.

she grasps them in her teeth now and in her haste, tosses them to the water where they float, until they sink. their dull crimson blooms and fades as if they were never there at all.