Lion Head Mesa Nefer

With a strike of daylight, a return is made to the land of the living.

Gods, her head.

She cradles a temple against her wrist and rights herself to peer around the space, alien in its smells but familiar, too. She spins and sees the medic’s stock and remembers with a bristle what’s happened.

“Hello?” She heaves to her paws and turns to searching, there are multiple apologies owed and the tremendous remorse that she’s sourced a commotion at this pack’s border.

"hello." tavina's voice sounded from where she had been reclining neatly against the wall in a doze.

now the sesh rose and walked to the beside. "do you remember anything?" she asked in her usual firm, warm manner. "Ra almost took you for himself."

who was this ailing little flower?

She whirls to seek the voice, breath catching with returning recollection.

“Your eyes.” Lucent; the color of spring lotus.

Her mouth cracks open like tinder across a fire. “Gods, bless you, you’ve saved my life.”

She slides her arms out in prostration, all she can at present offer to the healer, bewildered in not being able to give more. When she rises it’s on limbs grown stiff but with an intensity roiling across her face.

“My Lady, could you please tell me if this place is Akashingo?”

"it is. and i am tavina, its doctor."

a half-smile climbed the side of her face.

"not a lady at all."

the sesh crossed to the bedside, bending over the recovering woman. "my eyes, hm? what's your name? and what do you remember?"

“Doctor,” she corrects, a faraway daze anchors to the looming healer, “Thank you.”

Eyelids close momentarily but it wont temper the spinning. “I remember… violet eyes. And jade ones. A beautiful goddess- Hathor.” A dry swallow.

“Akashingo,” Her smile is tense. “I’ve come to serve the Queen.”

But what a dreadfully scant impression she’s made of herself. “Gods, forgive me. You must think my manners appallingly resigned,” She laments.

"not at all," tavina assured. "nothing makes me blink anymore." she spoke as though she were one of the many priestesses which had made akashingo their home, though the sesh did not ask further.

"the queen toula was here with me, praying and working as you slept. she will be happy to know you are awake." a smile. "what's your name?"

Delivered, not by any deity of the sky, but a godhead herself: the divine Queen Toula.

Gods what a mess. An even-temper is kept by her doctor, one she is grateful for as her own rugged voice is quick to shame, “I must seek forgiveness.”

“I am called Eset,” she introduces. “I have traveled many miles to reach here. Word has spread through my pack that a kind Queen ascends to the throne of Akashingo. I offer myself as her servant, if she will have me.”

She speaks no word of Shuyet, or her role as a serf runaway. She was not so naive to believe a kingdom would offer asylum to a frail refugee, even when helmed by one well-meaning.

eset. "you want to be a servant?" tavina asked in her brisk, good-natured way. "not a noblewoman or a priestess?"

a smile then, something that smoothed her eyes for a moment. "our queen is gracious and young. it would not be a burden to serve her. she needs — guidance. and loyalty."

her voice sharpened at this last.

A choice, or the illusion of one. She’d never before had that.

Is there a chance now to alter what’s been written? She will steal a moment of silence for a life she might have known had she been born not to her coyote mother.

But in the exhale her eyes will cast low, from resignation; from habit. “I…Draw baths and clean them. Sow fields and gather incense for the sem-priests. Do the washing. This is what I know.”

But it was not all she could offer.

“She will have my loyalty. In all ways.”

in all ways. tavina wondered if eset truly understood what it was she meant to be.

with a stab, she thought of nazli. "well, for that you'll need to rest. i'm going to mix you a sleeping draught. two more days of good rest, and i think you'll be ready to be up and around."

a small smile curled under the purple eyes.

There are not smiles like her’s in Shuyet. Hardship makes enemies of neighbors. Infighting and meager rations keep them weak.

But she has made it out. She has come to Akashingo, where affection is given to even the lowly servant. And in awe of this realization she will hold tight the medic’s comforting eyes, will begin to associate her with the perfume of thistle and a curt, yet amicable manner.

“When those days have passed, I wish to help you, Doctor,” she expresses, then with a more intimate use of her given name, “Tavina.”

“Allow me to refill your stores, it is the least I can do, for all your work.” For all her kindness.

tavina eyed the woman, finding herself lowering in immunity to the loveliness presented by eset.

she was only lonely, the sesh chided herself, and drew up. "all right. you can help me. but," tavina went on, "i won't have you straining yourself."

she worked as she spoke, mixing leaves of dark green and almost black, chewing one, grinding the other until the sharp scent of herbs filled the small room.

In quiet agreement she will dip her head.

Tavina busies herself, bent again over her work. The medic does not seem the type of woman who rests frequently. Eset would also not want Tavina to strain herself and longs to voice this-  but it is not within her rank to counter, nor ask the Doctor for her express company. Instead, she will settle back onto the bed, content enough to watch and listen in silence.

This craft is an art.

Tavina has the power to work changes upon the world from plants that grow common on the earth. It’s an ability to draw out the properties to heal- maybe those to unheal, too. Such wickedness is pushed swiftly away.

“How do you fare in Akashingo, Doctor?” She asks after a long stretch of silence. It’s a risk to broach such a subject though she feels some level of trust now with the medic, even if it is naive to.

"it's brisk work in a place this size," tavina said conversationally.

my wife is gone.

a tremble of her paw upon the mixture, and then she was finishing, turning with the bitter contents in a cupped dry leaf for eset.

she set it down. "it won't be an easy drink, but i did add a little honey."

nala's face, glimmering.

Etiquette is abandoned, as the woman tremors Eset reaches to cradle her paw against her own. She is ill by those violet eyes that a moment before held so firm.

“Tavina,” her voice is a hush, “what’s wrong?”

She braces her touch- a little steadiness as she searches over her face.

it had been so long a touch that it took tavina's breath away; she closed the violet eyes but behind them, an image, a glimpse of a wanted and lost future —!

her mouth, atremble; her chin refusing the cry as throat constricted;

"i had a wife here, briefly." to tavina's credit, her voice remained steady. she pressed eset's paw, then straightened herself and began to clean the surface of her workspace.

"she's — gone off, i — well. i suppose it's been difficult."

a purposeful understatement, even as she found she could not look at eset for fear she truly would bawl then.

“Oh Tavina. I’m so sorry.”

From the lips of anyone- an unspeakable agony.

From Tavina- far worse, to glimpse through the cavities of her obsidian impasse. To see the grief there.

It is only a glimpse. The doctor is quick to lay her mantle, to pull her paw and concern herself with the bay’s upkeep. Eset will not protest. This is what she will do with her pain- stow it away.

But not before a fragment will be gathered into the fellahin’s own heart, where it will live aside memories of her mother. Her own pain.

“I pray you find happiness again.”

She looks down at the prepared liquid, bringing it to her lips. Bitterness defiles her tongue but she forces it down.

tavina could only offer a smile too tight as she glanced to see eset down the potion.

removing the leaf and arranging the bedclothes, she urged the fellahin to lie back and dared a glance into the sharp coyote features against the softer blurring of wolf and woman.

"rest," she said, not allowing her heart to beat before she slipped for the door.

Too quickly the medic is gone and so is the certainty of her. The room feels too hollow and sparse in her absence, like a tree lacking its boughs.

She collapses onto the bed, her head thumping upon the stone. She sees Tavina’s violet eyes. She hears her mother’s scream. She buries them into the back of her mind. Yet still, rest will not come easy.