Lion Head Mesa That's a fine looking high horse

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She works during the day. Wiping soaked floors, stacking leather settings, scrubbing the Queen's dais until her face reflects in the sandstone and seeing that Her Majesty wants for nothing. She waits on the Princes and brings them their meals- fattened poultry and fresh-caught fish from the serpent, decanters of wine and beer.

During afternoon rest she paints crude sketches on the wall of her room, testing complementary colors and envisioning Toula’s reception hall in sophisticated paint. White, golds, blues, umber. Nothing that would pull focus from the sharpness of her eyes. Then she prays for protection from Bastet and patience from Thoth, health to the Queen, Tavina, Zaahira and the realm. She repents a sinner’s tongue. She vows to stay the course of a dutiful fellahin.

At the conclusion of the Queen’s evening regime she will go to the medbay to study under Tavina’s guidance.

At night when she collides with her bedstone, paw trailing down over herself it is Khusobek’s cold eyes in her mind, the collar like something unfed clinches for attention. Then are thoughts of a grieving doctor and an absent wife.

In the evening after bathing there is a recently returned mazoi to tend, a chamber to be prepared with pelts and glistening palace commodities. The good Queen wants for all who walk her halls to know and feel their value. Eset places an arrangement of cornflower blooms designed by Haziel on a shallow surface in the room. A pair of golden fox hides for the bedstone. Parched woven cups and dishes for water and wines, and frankincense to lightly perfume the air.

Approaching footfalls. She stands aside with a politely lowered head, ready at once to address the woman called @Legend.

Little time had she spent in her own chambers. Spare for warm nights that called for rest and scorching days that begged for cool, it had been largely untouched. A bed with little fur resting about, empty floors, barren walls; all of which, she must have had no mind to, or likely she would have found her own way to care for it.

Activities elsewhere had been far more entrancing.

So, today, as the sun held heavy in the sky, clouds parted way for its arms. She slipped her way elsewhere, where it would be quite and empty. Slowly, her paws dipped down into the shelter, the shadow of ground enveloping her head.

Her notice to change had been instant. Her hackles came to a rise, her eyes tossed over to room, and she did one take, two, at the...

Woman.

She stared. Her raised hackles did not move from their spike. Her smile did not leave, yet her brows went twisted and her head came to a quick, fast snap of a quirk. 

HEH?

She blinked once, twice, then rapidly before asking, "what you doing?"

A serf should be a veil, a shadow, kept silent and obscure. It was truest in those turbulent days when the house began to receive visitors late into the night and any serf who dared lift an eye would be plied with lashes upon their back. They had learned to read feet upon tile like the eyes of a face, memorizing gaits and mannerisms that went unobserved by others.

It is instinct that turns her eyes to the floor now, but recognition that keeps them there. The pair of paws that stop short to cast a shadow on the ground between them are pointed and graceful in shades of black tipped with ash-colored claws.

A voice speaks: feminine, faraway. Familiar. An involuntary shudders moves her.

“Furnishing your room, my Lady. The flowers, furs, incense…” She reaches for a distraction. “Would you like some wine?” Into a shallow dish she pours the red liquid and places it in the center of the room before stepping quickly off to one side.

Quick was she to follow her down. Her flank stayed positioned towards her, and her level head not allowing Eset to leave her sight. Her head came to a quick quirk, something that came up far too frequently within her habits, and oh, how slow she was to soon turn away. Tip-tap, tip-tap, she started to walk about the room, tossing her eyes along every last flower and fur- the pretty cups and the frankincense that was riddled with tales of woodlands. In her eyes, there was quick wonder, and then they fell upon the hickory-furred aimra'a. 

The scent of wine touched her nose.

"Smells of home. You agree?" Chipper voice, and now a chipper face, she swished her tail side, side, side-to-side, and watched Eset work. She did not deny the wine. 

The mazoi moves about the room. Eset traces the undulating eddies of the sandstone ground with a wide, dull-colored stare, only fluctuating to take in the sable silhouette of the wolf once.

“Of Akashingo,” her head nods, spurning the woman's real meaning and not parting with the hope that she could be convinced otherwise. Eyes lift now to the framework of the doorway and eager to pass through it. “There are a few other vintages in the palace stores. I will fetch them-” she steps.

Swiftly, she was down in the chamber. Every nook and cranny, she gave attention to with a flank towards Eset's. In surprised hackles and wide eyes, all of her attention swiveled back to the woman as if she were a novelty to look at. A strange one. Her voice interrupted hers immediately. "I come with!"
Stepping beside her, she followed her stride.

"Or you stay here?" she asked. "You don't want drink? Very hot," she nosed the direction of the entrance. "Here shady?" was her next offer, her head coming to a small nod as she added. She wished to overwork herself? In heat?

The mazoi’s voice is strange and broken, like a hum, the space between two notes in a song. She waits for it to fade into the air, for her mind to right itself. It is the discomfort, or the high-summer heat that dots stars into her eyes and she moves to the center of the room to drink from the wine. A small sip, and a second longer one.

Down through her limbs the fire snakes, an immediate effect the taste has on her. Her eyes are grave, skeptical as they raise to meet the mazoi now. She’d often imagined what her face looked like. She is surprised to find a beautiful softness there, but it is the coolness of the two silver moons which captivates. There is the sensation of being caught in a web.

“Thank you,” her voice is quiet. It is all she can think to say for the consideration. “You are Legend?"

"Yes."

Eset's turn was followed. It would not have been the first time she crossed her as she did now. It would not be the first time she kept her stride and did not take a second glance in her direction. Muscle memory was ingrained.

But she did not listen to it today.

When she turned back to the wooded woman, it was with eyes that would truly meet hers for a time that it'd never had before. She found interest in this- she found more in watching her, and even more in lapping at the wine in careful flicks of her tongue. "Eset. Your name, yes?" She knew so already. "You are Fellahin, yes? You feel comfortable so?" And she knew again, but oh, how she wanted an answer, and she wanted to hear.

She watches. She’s watched. She knows not to trust, but the wine loosens her muscles and she’s pasted there intentionally. They take their turns at the bowl and exchange attentive laps, everything known yet unspoken accumulating on wine-dyed breaths.

The servant makes a nod, “The Queen is good to me here. I am going to stay.” She has no intention of returning to the place where they met, she would make that known.

“Will you?” The ask is timid but she allows herself to settle back, ears keeping politely perked. She shifts the bowl closer to Legend.

Will she?


Would Eset?

"Maybe." In time, the wine would loosen the wires of her mind too. Another lap, and she quickly blinked. Even with a closer bowl, she would not drink more. Legend put it back in it's place. "Yes?" A confident response, but there settled a question on it.

"I am mazoi." Mazoi, mazoi, mazoi! "But." For the time being. "I have little job- do not fit with the other mazoi. They are strong- you have seen them?" Her role as mazoi was a bit different. She was no warrior, that much was for certain, but they were. What one would come to the quarters for, she did not fit the expected mold immediately. Not that she minded. But it did mean she could not find much to do. And not that she wanted work- work BORING! But nothing was more boring. "Fellahin have more?"

Before her, Legend’s raven form dances and she listens closely to the ingress of doubts. Whatever role this woman had played in Shuyet, it was not that of a soldier. She only imagined it was something darker. Unspeakable.

The mazoi talks of a warrior’s strength. Khusobek looms in her mind unsolicited. “I’ve seen.”

She skims her forelegs together. “Why be mazoi? You could be anything.”

It felt good, the wine. To let loose the coils of an addled mind. But like many things she will only permit herself a taste, never to enjoy it in full.

“I’ll be drunk,” she admits with shy laugher.

Shuyet could not be coaxed from her lips.

Not sober.

"You'd like to be drunk?" With her nose, she motioned towards the wine. "No safer place. You prefer?"

Legend did not drink when she asked her next question to Eset.
"Have you found man?"

No safer place. Her eyes leaden with mistrust. But she drinks.

“You have,” comes the counter with a knowing look given. She tilts her head, muzzle dripping red.

The fellahin keeps a discreet eye on proceedings, seeing much of what passes in the palace, including those who enter into the chambers of the Erpa-ha.

But there was another, before. The one she’d never been without. Eight paws, and never four that came to their doors in the dead of night.

“Where is the shadow man?”

All of her muscles tightened. Her teeth bit her tongue as her jaw came to a shut.

Slumping her head slowly down, her tongue did no more leave the wine. Lap, lap, lap after lap, until her pinned eyes could find themselves no longer in pain. No longer hurt.

"Llldbe..le.." Suddenly, she felt awfully...awfully..AWFUL! Her words immediately slurred.
"Heeee.." He..He...He.. Le..le... Seth. Seth. He l..he..he.. She couldn't say it! Her heart twisted. Foul! She denied it. "Home." Easier! She couldn't say the other word! TERRIBLE WORD! She did not know if that was where he was.

"You come here. Why?"

Such pain on that face, twisted and horrible in its agony! Yet she found she could not look away, because it was something real. Real too was the way her paw slid forward to for a moment touch the other’s. Soft. How strange to look for so long, and only now touch. And it is only in this way the fellahin, whose body had a hundred uses given to another, knows how to comfort.

And she drank.

“I wanted a life. That was no life.”

And drank.

“I’m sorry he left. No, I’m not sorry. You can have a future here too, you know.”

She stands to pour more wine, filling the bowl now to the brim.

“Senmut, he will be Pharaoh.”

What does Legend make of that?

“We can cheers to it.”

"Sweeping halls? No life for you?" Her master had been the reason she knew of her name. Legend remembered him.
If only she knew who he was to her.


Abandoned. Alone. He had left her, and she had no one. She needed it again. She needed the high of want and purpose.


Why did she hurt, when she'd laughed with him before he left?
Why did her chest feel hollow?


Her nose pulled up a sniff. "I do not need him. And he will return." As if her mind could not comprehend that he would not.


"Senmut? He rises.. To Pharaoh?" Little had she heard his name. In fact, she'd called him prince so often and had cleared way from others paths, little had she time to hear it. This was the first time she'd spoken it. "It has been sealed?" And he would leave her too.

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“I have choice, here. The Queen gives me that.” And she would continue to have it with Senmut, would she not?

She drinks and laughs. “And look at where we get to live!” She rises only to stumble, then rises again only to whirl about. She tosses her head back to look up into the stone ceilings. “Have you ever seen a place more beautiful?” She spins and comes to a wobbly stop. There rests the wine. She decides to drink some more.

Yes, Senmut. The man you’re sleeping with will be Pharaoh.

“With some persuasion,” her lips curl coyly. “Someone with influence, to help him see his potential.” She pulls back to study Legend, only she can’t with her vision still a spin.

“He is very handsome." she whispers, drawing closer to the raven-coated girl (but maybe too close). "Besides, I hear desert-bred men have a lot of stamina. Is that true, Legend?” She giggles devilishly.

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She'd expected little of their interactions. No more, no less. Her mind was a blank slate that took as things came, acted as choices arose, and took all of it in a flurry. She certainly did not expect per say, or perhaps she just did not think about it, that Senmut's rise would change much. There were, after all, other princes. Would he care to be within her vicinity afterwards? He would be a pharaoh, no? It would be greatly frowned upon, when she was mazoi! Not even a fellahin, a serf, who in history served purposes, if that was what he saw her as! No, he would not. There was also the Queen.
He would have had to be insane to do that.


He would have to be different.


Was Senmut insane?


"It very pretty." Legend was slouched, dwelling on Seth and his departure. "And-" her head dramatically followed Eset's along, as if the ceiling had beautiful stars painted along them. Visions of ruby and diamond. "With the most luxurious luxxx ever." What the hell was she saying? Ohhhhhh yeah! Prince Seme----Ut.

"He's very nice. N... Hot.. You seen his eyes? He's h-HHHhhhOot. But annyone can see that!" she tossed her paw. "And I didn't..pshtt..do that.." She totally laid with Senmut. "That would be. That be verrrry inappopiut. That not me at all. Bbpsht. BUT IF I did, traveling back to Shuyet would've been less tiring," and she said that so matter-a-factly, it was concerning, all with a big fat nod if that wasn't enough. Though, it had not been sex that was pulling her in to the rising Pharaoh. Oh, no, she didn't need that. Legend did not lie, however, that it was not like her to sleep with any. She'd been a modest soul. Senmut pulled it out of her. "Would you know bed with a desert man, Eset? Have you gott'n jiggy?"

Shuyet. She stops spinning. She is almost sad, in this drunken fever.

“Mm you wan- you wanna know something… L-Legend?” She sings against the girl that’s cradled now, paw to wrist, cheek-to-cheek, holding her fast. “I go to many beds… but none are men.” she giggles again between laps of wine, pushing the bowl under Legend’s nose to drink. It spills in red stains on the sandstone.

Then she jumps up! Up onto her four paws and prances about the room, raising her tail to waft the incense. “Boys. Mussss play part, you see, Legend! Act miss sunshine, beautiful, doll-eyes, shy, virtue paragon!! Submissive. Tha’s how they want us. N-no confidence. Nn g-goddesses forbid I, I mean, me, enjoy myself.”

“Y-yyyour haaaandsome prince. He has you, yes, and men. And th-the Queen, and fine it is! No batting eyes. Not f-for me. N-not for women. We-e must be in-nnocent. Annn guess what…Legend?” She whispers now.

“I’ve never been that! Nnooooooot even once, my eentire life!” She drowns in hysterics, doesn’t know what she’s trying to say anymore, only that she feels a great disparity in her chest that she wants gone, and there was only one way to do that.

“S-so, Legend. Will you d….dance with me, then?”

She extends a paw to the girl.

It was not simple touch Eset would receive, but a blessed hug as her arm went around the other woman's neck. Her voice was from the pits of a shadow land as they touched her ears. Misery, humor and mockery that slushed together and made muck in her stomach. 

When Eset pulled away, she had turned to a beastly trot around the room, delicate and fierce to face fires. Legend was entranced with its mystery and could not look away. Their lives, and her life, a mold Eset did not fit into, was placed before the ears of the room, and Legend would be forced to understand it as it settled in cracks and bones. Men, men, men! Boys who believed they could take title of men. None worthy enough for Eset.

Her paws swiveled to follow her in circles as she stayed in the center of the room. Turning her eyes alone grew impossible. "Oh, no, Eset! Your pleasure!" Legend stood on her hind legs, lifting her front paw to her forehead. "It's- It's-" she acted to hype up her finished sentence, "MOOT!" and then dramatically feigned a faint. "A serf to be pleased by man? You're deranged!" Legend acted as if she crawled from a hole, grasping at the ground before coming to a stand. Her mouth coughed from the insence.

Then her whisper. Legend whispered back. "You? Woman? Not innocent?" GASP! How PREPOSTEROUS! She was loopy as fuck to amuse it.

Then, she was bounding about the floors with her, dancing in unison(or they'd think so this wasted). "We will dance away the beds of foolish mennnn. Allllll away from you! Nnn..Its not like I need..HH.mhah..nanha..HH." Legend was tearing up, and her breath was quickening. She gasped in shaky breaths. "NmmSeeth. I don' neeeed him att alL!" Her lip trembled as she told herself that. 

They spun and danced and sang! Or at the very least gyrated drunkenly together. And breath would be caught with mouthfuls of more wine. Legend is a beautiful dancer, like a goddess Neith, the way her raven-fur ripples in the smoke, and eyes like the full moons always watching wherever she turns, this way and that. The fellahin pirouettes clumsily into her arms, nipping her cheek playfully before spinning herself away, laughing all the while.

“Sethhhhhhh,” she hisses his name, like a witches howl on her tongue. “Yourrrrrrr ssssshadow? Myyy, wha big feet! He hasss!!” She keels off into the wall with laughter. The wine spills across the tiles.

“Oh gods sh-” There are tears in Legend’s eyes.

“Oh,” she breathes and gathers the mazoi up into her arms. “Heyyyy… hey. They’re the foollsss. HE’S the fool tooo miss thissss, alll of yoooouu, right here, in front of him! Ok? Hear me? You’reee so…pretty an an well a little kooky I’m gonnnnna admit but, I am likin' that.” She rocks her, or at least, smushes her face into her chest as some barest attempt at a soothing song bubbles at her slurring lips.

“Ok….ok maybe WE are foolsss too, Legenn. But, y’knowwww what!?” She sways, using the other girl mostly to keep herself righted now.

She holds her hand up over her mouth, lips pressing in over Legend's ear, “I’m gonna be a fool in the pool!”

Out into the hall she shoots, paws beating down the stone at a jagged gallop, “You coming???”

Rivulets of drunken laughter.

... KOOKY?

SETH LEFT HER BECAUSE SHE WAS KOOKY.

But Eset reminded her that she was SEXY.

Legend had come to an entire sit still. With a trembling lip, she stared directly at Eset, tears bubbling at the corners of her eyes and a nose daring itty bitty sniffles. "Yah?" her voice shot out. Quiver, quiver went her lip as she pushed her bottom lip tighter to her top, as if it'd stop the trembling. "Youthinksso?" Eset was sooooooooooo nice.. And kind.. She had the best kind of comfort, surely, to tell her all these niceeee things..

FUCK HIM! When he was missing ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL this!

Shesmu's siren was howling in their ears a beautiful song as they danced about the room in coordinated sloppiness. Her head swung and swayed as she too leaned against Eset, her paws in a bounce before she was whispered next the most devilish thing. Oh, the POOL! Her teary eyes were gone and lost as an ecstatic, drunken smile took over her as she took off bolting to the wellspring with Eset.

"ＷＯＯＯＯＯＯＯ!"

“Shhhhhh!! I coooould geeet in biiiiiiig troublee,” futile prompts are stuffed between clamorous bouts of her own laughter that rose in wolven tones to dance with Legend’s howl. Most the palace would be asleep now- surely? Or otherwise, too engrossed in other activities to care for commotion at the baths.

She rounds the cusp of the spring, warm steam tingling across her fur from off the surface of glass. Even drunkenly she prepares the water with an excess of oils and fragrance and offers to her raven friend an escort’s arm. She lets out an exaggerated sigh as the flushing water licks up her legs.

“Enoughhhh of menn,” she rests her neck over the brim to leer at the girl across from her, “who are you?”

“Telll mee your secrets, Legennd.”

"With Pharaoh?"

As far as she knew, no Pharaoh she cared about held over their heads! Minion giggles brought the women to the wellspring, where they'd dipped their bodies in the water like dumplings. She could feel her fur come to a pretty tickle as water trickled between her paws, then enveloped her flank and neck to a spa slick.

With the click of her tongue, she leaned her back firm against the edge while resting on her hind legs. Her paw flung out of the water, and lazily flicked circles in Eset's direction. Legend's eyes were in a daze as they came to a role, still saddened, her mind thinking, thinking... "MnnnN and what of you. Yourr bigggg owner or whatevers. He trade you? Bad floor mop? Waz your pity story?"
She recalled Eset's neck the most, or the quick flash of her eyes hitting the floor the second she treaded through.
Legend just remembered the careful talks she would have with her master. The role she was to play. Seth's assurance and direction through it or whatever, and Eset's master's big fat mouth. Why would she leave HIM? If she were a serf, she'd wanna serveeeee THAT guyyyyy.

Legend sends water and Esets cuts it with her teeth! The snaps and splashes and giggles entombed all about them. Beneath the surface her tail wades as Legend evades, and now her own eyes will cast dizzily away into some port of numbness. She would hold her peace where decidedly it could no longer be touched.

But Legend knew, because she had been there. And Eset laughs at the absurdity of having served the mazoi some fine meal in the last life only to be bathing beside her in the next.

“He didnn’ trade me- I got away.” Mom. “He isssn’t good, Legend,” Apep.

“Shee never tolld me. But I kneww. Shee couldn’ look at me without seeing him.” Halfblooded. Distantly she stares, massaging the back of her skull along the edge of the spring.

“Ha! I don want your pity. Nnn don ask for mine. Girlsss like uss, we have a lot more to live for thannn that. But youuu owe me noww. So tell me.”