Sheepeater Cliff eighty-eighth

backdated to may 29th <3

the bleakened velveteen dark of early morning brought senmut awake, as if the complete absence of Ra here could not allow his soul to settle.

he was restless, and rose; but more than that he wanted to climb higher along the cliff. and so he stole along between somnolent bodies to rouse @Legend and whisper of his intentions.

he wanted a high place to offer prayers to the holy light when it poured across the mountains, and therein senmut would seek communion with the gods, to know if they should continue or turn back.

A whisper rose her from valleys of rest. Laid forth in her ears, a vision of the mountains spilled over with gods light.

Tired, with closed lids just barely unearthing her pupils behind their shelter. There, they touched over the features of Senmut's face in dark, and together they rose to follow up the overgrown paths. Racing the rise of the sun, so that it may be greeted by prayer in its awakening.

Her erpa-ha was flanked, the touch of his heavy steps met with the quiet trots of her legs hitting the ground. Deer-like, passing looks over top of his shoulder and eye-level often to his chest with a dipped head.

Even when she did not look to him, her head was pulled to the magnet of his throat and chin. He was a guide.

Legends voice was a whisper, and danced with a wonder that the lost did. "Does he know how to get to," her gaze looked forward to the peak, "top?"

"he does," senmut murmured, "but only if she helps him." her eyes had caressed him a half-dozen times while the hour was darkened, and now he wanted to see the splendor of her gaze as godlight fell across the land.

he took another ledge, and then another. the skies had changed to the first shade of dark grey and he knew he must focus upon climbing the cliffside.

for a time there was only the sound of their breath, their claws upon stone. and the large flat top of sheepeater soon loomed above them, spurring the pair on.

he let out a self-deprecating laugh when at long last they found the large expanse of rock.

Turning to him, the desert-dwellers smile tipped across her shady features. "Yes!"  She would see soon the wide oversight of the flatlands.

Where the tall leaves she had never found to cross paths with even her dreams displayed themselves below her like sand. Smooth-stepped, she climbed with him.

The imp swept through the crevices and uneven rockways. She'd slip silently, and then, oh, she would try again, daring a mountain as a dune. Those same efforts were what revealed a stable way to lead the prince.

The sky had begun its first stages of morph. Clouds rolled behind them in gray, and ahead was the clear view of the stars, and where the sun would birth.

"Look," she whispered so the gods did not disturb, and pattered to the flat edge with her hackles upon raise, eyes drawn into an ocean deep amusement. Dunes of trees, of valleys. Did he see?

he saw, he saw!

senmut scrambled up the last little promontory and out onto the true spread of grey stone over which the gentle lightening already lipped.

trees in rows and rows of bluest hue; senmut laughed aloud in surprise and wonder. "like a sea of lapis lazuli," he breathed to legend, "a jewel we can never capture, able to be held only by the cage of memory."

the stars slept, one by one, and he turned his pleased eyes upon legend, truly satisfied to share such a moment with her.

"Lapis!" She repeated, gasping it from her mouth and staring below to the mass of floral dunes.

Never this high, never once, never twice, no, not with the spawn of Osiris before them. With a turn of her inked face towards his chin, the woman's eyes looked quickly between Senmut, between the expanse.

"Tell," she asked, eager, "of the things He prays for. What he tells the Gods when Ra rises." Legend imagined many things. Why, the erpa-ha could speak in a myriad of words, voices and tongue, and though she had bowed to his feet, prayed to his prayer, she had never heard him in this way.

What worse thing than to not know, and now she wished to know. Senmut could show her. Again, the yaret asked, knowing well the gods very well heard her now as the god speakers ears faced her. "What does He tell them?"

he?

did legend speak of him, or the Golden One? but had he not once been a god before?

the righteous glow of amber began upon the horizon, and his voice lifted. this part was for a priestess to sing, senmut knew, but his clear tones carried the melodic prayer up toward the gilding sun.

he raised his arms into the air, the words a soft wash of gold dust.

and when he turned his face upon legend, his profile was lit by Ra, and senmut himself was reflected only as a red shadow of shimmer against the waking sun.

Senmut would not be a god without a goddess. Godlihood, an ascension too high for a demon of boiling hell-song and soul tattered keys, but if he was a god and she was his throne, should he sing as a priest in this moment, she would become his remade priestess.

Changeling, god. Changeling, God.

Red light encapsulated him as a god. God.

The devil was beautiful when she sang, fallen into the erpa-ha's eyes. A pirouette in voice did not dare overshadow the call of the divine. Prayer to prayer, wind drifted through the strand of each hair. In the dark of Senmut's silhouette and sun-bathed face, Legend could not take away her eyes from his as their shadows grew, and Ra burned their immortal skin.

Immortality fled her the brighter his emerald eyes shined, and the longer she could see through the maze of his pupils. A twist formed in the deep of her belly. Torn from her was her siren eyes, opening into a does while her heart raced a million suns ahead of her limbs. Senmut, seeing her, and then came again: what was this, if not seen?
What was this if not seen?

For a moment, Legend truly felt as if he bore through her soul just then and her breath was put to a stop. Senmut sang the most beautiful prayer.