Lion Head Mesa Primrose

She did not even know what got her out of bed that evening, except that she felt this night had been approved by order, set in stone many years ago. Ignorance had been the sweetest sin, but now Merneith felt the prophecy of Gods in every awakened thought.

Her paws drift on their own accord, separate to a mind that threatens change at any moment. Under the primordial archways and out into the gardens she emerges, passing through expansive orchards bedecked with fruits and flowering buds and saccharine sensations.

But her senses are unmoved. It is only the twilit @Khaemwaset she seeks; his parching focus. His gold-spun mantle.

sugary fruit on wintry air, taunting the last wasps to die.

prince of chaos stood silent in the arbors built by efforts aimed in aspiration for what was divine.

he did not expect to see neith when he turned, and so he was transfixed when his eyes fell upon her lone form.

over and over khaemwaset had returned to the throne room, replaying — attempting to revisit and remember what had gone wrong.

now the proud eyes — blurred. he wanted to turn away, to reject neith as deeply as she had done to him.

but it was his tears which invited her now.

It is the prince who stands before her, face all wet and glistening. Fur, pasted to his cheeks. His long ears the same as Daddy’s as they aimed at the heavens. His jaw squared, his shoulders beginning to broaden. When Khaem turns his glossed eyes, her gaze locks, incapable of looking elsewhere.

Scathed. Merneith sees this torment and knows if he despised the thought of having anything to do with her again, she would not blame him. Her brother was an idealistic boy. There was nothing idealistic about what she’d done.

Yet ever since that day at the thrones, nothing felt right anymore. She could not bear it.

“Khaem,” the princess crumbles. Grief seals her throat, misery weighing her tongue. “I’m sorry,” and when she drifts to his side there is a great part of sister that suffuses with brother, feeling his emotions as if they had become her own.

She realizes then that she doesn't want to wait a moment longer and instinctively the pale forearms slot into place, encasing his shoulders as she draws her chin over his spine.

“I'm scared. But I'm most scared of losing you," the amiirad murmurs into the ticking of golden nape.

"i thought i did lose you, neith," khaemwaset admitted in painful utterance when he was able to speak once more. their arms twined in the velvet spill of their fruiting trees, amid the garlands of floral decadence still hanging gaudy with perfume.

the night was still and so at last was amiir's lionheart. "we shall never be parted, my sister," khaemwaset proclaimed. "i will not leave your side until Osiris wills it."

an oath, and he uttered it for all their gods to hear, gazing with rapt intensity at neith. she had come back to him; she had returned, and he knew with a priest's zeal that he would do anything to keep her with him always.

crystalline tears wet the mouth already smiling.

How tightly she held him; leaving no spaces between them. She would’ve had to be ripped away.

Neith bared her brother’s grief. Their tears fused, and when his token of troth was presented beneath the mooneye it was as real to her as any taken before the witness of Gods.

“We shall never be parted,” her voice shook with its own true part, and fiercely she meant it. He would not abandon her as Mother and Father had. Not as Den had opened within her a great empty chasm. Her face withdrew only to see how his eyes illuminated beneath the milk light. She pressed a kiss to his warm, damp cheek.

“Khaem, I am ready to know.”

"then learn. learn with me," khaemwaset half-begged into the pale gold of neith's existence.

he stood back; he stood tall; he lifted her paw to his lips and turned back toward akashingo, toward the red thrones in the vaulted room.

"all we must know is there, neith. we must sit. we must listen to the darkness whispering." his eyes danced a giltshadow dance; he drew her toward the doorway.

"sit there," khaemwaset said when they had come to the great room; he said this breathlessly of the throne that had belonged first to queen satsu, then queen treva.

he wanted to see neith instated as the portrait loomed over them both.

Pharaoh Ramesses’ watching eyes are a cobalt glow in the empty cathedra. The children’s small footsteps are loud, it is almost too hard to linger in as Neith is led toward the prominence of the two thrones. She is a minute creature in the midst of deep red eminence, where permeates a distinct feeling that they should not be here– not while Pharaoh and Semer-wati are away.

What if Satakh should catch them? What if Den?

But the princess of light listens for the fluent coo of her name, finding the whole sun in her lion brother’s voice. A rapturous pleasure in his command as the dais awaits, vacant.

The ascent is shy, the lazuli eyes her guide, and by the time Merneith is seated, nacre over red,  youth has been lanced from her bones.

Such height quickens her breath. Looking up into a dome of darkness Neith is suddenly made aware of all she may be. The blood of the universe shivers within pulsing veins and she gasps, feeling what she can never express and yet cannot conceal as her eyes find the prince.

Feeling and thought and sense and soul, everything merges in a moment which gives her at last Khaem; around her, beneath her, above her.

“Beside me,” breathlessly, she calls to him.

it was prophets and priests who had made the gods, one argument offered. priests who preyed upon the fear of worshippers and made themselves deities.

but khaemwaset had been reared with no such disdain; he had been bred in spirit and in blood and divinity for the roughhewn red of the thrones.

goldsword eyes watched with quickening wonder as neith ascended the queen's seat. its power seemed to swallow her for a moment, just a lingering shiver of time before his beloved sister  lifted her voice to him.

amiir did not need to be bid again. nailclick on polished floor, mouth dry, and then he was touching the warm stone and moving himself into the seat of pharaoh.

again.

again.

as statues they were still beside one another, until khaemwaset exhaled softly into the velveteen black; "i have sat in this place before."

he raised a paw, gesturing to the vast emptiness of the throne room as if an audience waited for his decree;

"let them know that i, khaemwaset, Lord of Illusions, son of rashepses and son of Ra — i proclaim myself Crown Prince."

to say it! to say it! his teeth glittered as he swung a honeyed expression toward neith, deified witness to his glib treason.

There was no fear in him. Why should there be? He had always known it for himself. In the secret lochs of her heart, in which no crocodilian brother basked, Neith had known it too.

The throne, it consumed Khaem with a passion. There was no rest in him. He looked as though he could have parried the realm’s most celebrated warrior. Where once he sat he would again. Pharaoh, he would be called. None would question it. His eyes on her limned in ancient gold. She felt it growing in power all around them.

But Neith was a stranger to herself, turned to divinely carved alabaster for no reason she could explain. None by her name had brandished the crook and flail. And the suspension lingered, this moment eternal, the tick of her lifetime; present, future, rising in rhythmic ecstasy.

I am a Queen; the thought persists– no– “I am the Queen.”

queen.

one throne. two sisters.

one role as pharaoh. two brothers.

it was khaemwaset who had made himself heir this eve; now he kept his more solemn eyes upon neith. 

he could not confirm that for her, not when satakhetem held some eerie piece of his spirit, and he of her own. but merneith, the gentle lioness who looked at him with her entire spirit standing in her gaze — how could he stand against her own proclamation? she loved him in a way their antelope sister did not.

his smile was a slow burn, an encouragement.

"what would you do first as queen, Divine One?" he murmured into the sleeping dark, unblinking; unable to stir more than his voice as the ancient powers of the chamber pressed down upon them.

If there was no wind to shake her delicate furs and strip her body bare with frost-slung caresses of cold, then it was only in Merneith’s mind she felt the nether world abound thrust against her. Their squalls are a violent storm of refutation!

This is not how it was designed! She felt the gods condemn it! Reeling against brother of darkness beside sister of sun.

And still she allowed her eyes to rest upon Khaem, as if they two were acacia trees whose fates were separated by a river between, but whose boughs were mated where their blooms did touch.

“My first act as Queen will be to instate my trusted advisor as vizier,” the gods moan! “Then I will dance in the arms of my prince-husband before all the court!”

Her eyes fall shut. In the vapor the princess gently sways.

“Tell me, what you will do, Pharaoh Khaemwaset?”

it was the wrong thing to say, and had khaemwaset not been transfixed by the glory of the Horus Throne, he might have forcefully commanded neith, that there should be no other existent between pharaoh and queen.

instead, the prince filled his lungs with the sweet air and smiled softly at nothing.

he was intended for satakhetem in the same way dear merneith had belonged to den since their first hour. yet this room and this moment inked itself to the proverbial papyrus of their soul.

pharaoh. the sound of it moved upon his spirit. "i will build a new tomb for my queen upon the crushed flesh of our enemies." an act of devotion, khaemwaset meant to assure their afterlife while they still drew breath.

Her brother was a romantic– already he seemed a man and not a boy. Was it only the faraway look in his eyes that said he was moving quickly from childhood? Neith tilts her head to the side and grins at him, as she’s seen mother smile at father.

The way he spoke with such certainty, he would never let anyone force him to do anything that didn’t fit his image of himself, and Neith adored him for being what he was: strong, resolute, determined to be his own. Doting on his Queen.

On the well-worn arm of stone the amiirad leans to kiss the side of her brother’s temple and hears a thousand enraptured onlookers erupt in acclaim.

“How shall a Queen treat her Pharaoh on the day of ascendance?” She tickles his muzzle with her’s.

Pharaoh Ramesses’ lapis eyes stare.

"she should dance. not only for pharaoh but for the gods," khaemwaset purred, settling deeper into the ragged stone of the red seat.

choosing that moment to look toward neith, he was affected by her loving regard, the way stars stood in her beautiful eyes. his own kiss then was quick, his smiles reserved in part for her alone; "they will throw garlands of flowers to her and sing her name, for Hathor's glory must be renewed again and again."

was it the priest who had taught him this, or did he recite from some ancient tome, opening just now to his holy might.

his palm, warm upon her cheek, a somber cloud falling hard between them.