Two Eyes Cenote ninety-eighth

whenever! <3

what goings-on in the Lotus Palace might have occurred were not things sought by senmut. his days were spent with @Nazli and with @Aiesha. already he had begun to show their daughter how the solemn paints might be stirred, ready for distribution in its service to their murals, their altars, their idols.

he passed his days in some disk of blissful existence, sheltered by the hebsut's willingness to keep very much to herself. he did not command reports; he did not act as a prince in her dominion.

in peace he sought @Eset now, knowing the time had come that once more he return to the palace, and unwilling to do so, unwilling despite the fact that senmut knew he must indeed go back.

She had been eluding the Erpa-ha.

He had been there. He had seen.

He had observed the hebsut’s choices. He was privy to her foundering.

The flinch is unbidden as the familiar steps sound through the hollow corridors. Now there is nowhere left to turn; the only choice is to stand formally in the center of the hebsut’s quarters, chin held persistently still. The coy’s amber eyes trace his entry into the room. She curves into a devoted bow.

this moment which had scarred and defied all reason for eset had become a moment in which senmut did not know how to find his own footing. it had not been for him to see; therefore he did not think of it.

and so these repressed images slanted into his mind from time to time. he watched her with the brilliance of green eyes which could not help but reflect her own deep hurt for a vulnerable moment. a priest, mirroring.

"i am leaving, hebsut. i wished to ask you to give me an account of any stores here which must be filled again from our stock in the palace, what is necessary. what is needed. what you will have me tell pharaoh."

that last for her to decide. how curious that they had stood together so often and yet senmut felt as if he had only glimpsed the hebsut. the memory of her pain did not define eset for him; he had seen now only her closed doors and her agony. what else made of steel and hope comprised the woman before him now.

For a time his face was grievous, drinking the same oppressive tension from the air. Acknowledged by both of them, yet remaining unspoken. She wanted to thank him, for being there. For not burying her, when perhaps a wolf of his status should have. But no matter how she shaped her mouth the words would not come to tongue. She did not know how to peel back the layers, one at a time, until what’s underneath was known. Her skills were in designing and cleansing, and for all her aptitude she was helplessly disorientated to trust.

Time and again the hebsut felt she had failed Muat-riya. Yet time and time again, Senmut chose to treat her with a grace she was not convinced she deserved. 

Somehow, they both found a way to move into a neutralized space; the one she was most comfortable occupying. Still, under the kindly jeweled gaze, she felt her tensed shoulders soften.

“Salt, coriander. Peppercorns, for the scullery. Bearberry and golden poppy for Tavina’s stores, if you would, Erpa-ha.” A pause.

“Please tell Pharaoh @Toula– everything. The threats at our borders. The carriage of unknown drugs. That we hold a man, Soto, captive for his involvement with our young mazoi. That a boy was killed in the waters of our cenote. That his death still goes unanswered. That Machiavelli is hunted. That we intend to defend him.”

“That the hebsut has had a miscarriage. That she is now fine.”

Eset no longer wished to hide. She was trying.

for eset, he did not stagger beneath the weight of that pronouncement. senmut held her words. he cradled them in his heart and felt the heft of their honesty, the pain formed into something tangible between he and she in that moment.

she stood unabashed and open before him, her strength apparent in how she shed the kalasiris of her introversion and let it fall to the open air.

"i will see it done, eset." his voice upon her name was reverently warm.

these words must hold his spirit entire for her own to hear.

on a whim, senmut extended his paw to take one of her own, if she offered it. "i seek my prayers. come with me, please." they would cleanse themselves in communion; he would entreat healing to wash over eset. she did not need to ask for this.

How the pair of black-rimmed eyes smoked so intensely within his face. She was a mortal. She felt the beating of her heart and the pinprick of nerves. But to Eset, Senmut would always be divine.

She hesitates for only a moment and takes his hand, following wherever he would lead.

Penitence pulsed where their two bodies met, the glittering eyes of the Gods entered her mind.

“I have brought shame to my position. I left Muat-riya to become pregnant. It will not happen a second time, Erpa-ha,” she avows, without alluding that to do so again would end fatally.

These days of new fatherhood should have been his most peaceful. The hebsut silently cursed that she would enumerate difficulties upon his mind.

her honesty belonged in its own shrine, on altars for many to study and to revere. he was tongue-twisted; he did not know what to say. it was not the content of what eset spoke; it was her clear trust in him. he did not believe he deserved it. 

"i have all faith in you, eset. Hathor calls to us all, i think. She tests your willingness to serve in what ways She sees fit."

he swallowed; he did not part their touch, but at last covered the top of her hand with his second. "forgive yourself. i hold nothing against you for what has happened. if there was a price to pay, eset, you have paid it."

He speaks sacred words meant to heal, but it substantiates all Eset had feared to be true. The Gods were angered. They had ruined so utterly. Her eyelids closed. She forbade herself more tears and focused only on the guiding warmth of holy hands. This feeling must be honed; taken, sculpted, and turned into something else.

When Senmut absolved her sins, he forgave with the voice of a god. But in this moment of precious vulnerability, her eyes reopen to find his.

“Hathor has called to you,” the smile on the hebsut's lips is thinning, yet unalloyed as she recalls their conversation from so many months before, when Senmut's love for Nazli was veiled behind his faith. “Do you want marriage?”

It was not bittersweet. Eset was warmed to see the Erpa-ha's life open to happiness, and in the secret annals of her own heart, it awakened the long buried desire she held for her own partnership.

his turn to smile, to think of nazli. solemnness followed then, a quietude of heart which left him pensive. "i was taught always that priests and priestesses did not marry. i love her and it makes me uneasy to consider being a husband, if only for the imbalance that love demands."

his love for nazli had not yet interfered with his duties, yet senmut knew that to lose himself entire in her might never bring him back to the gods.

"there is an oasis along the serpent river. i would like to take her there. already we might have gone, were it not for the danger."

Her face soothes, a level of shared understanding passing in empathetic looks between them. He had already left a mark with his love, for Nazli would raise their daughter. But Eset was thinking of Senmut’s restless life. Even as they stood here within the palatial blue halls, moments were passing. The gentle baby was growing, refining into a girl of Muat-riya. Mother and child separate from Senmut; royal priest of Akashingo. Nazli, raising their daughter alone.

Eset draws a breath, returning to the evergreen. These months the hebsut felt she hung in a thready balance with the gods, casting many doubts on her devices. Still, her mind spun with a living prayer that might yet see the two in enduring union, whether or not through the tradition of marriage.

“If I can make it so, I will, Erpa-ha. Aiesha will be looked after if you wish it to be a holiday only for the two of you,” the amber eyes a tender glint.

every day he thought of the same; every day senmut felt himself torn between god and love. between palaces, between fatherhood and his ultimate devotion to those divine. eset's offer brought a boyish glow to his soft smile; thinking of nazli.

did they know one another still?

"thank you, hebsut," he said at last, earnestly glancing into her face. "our realm would be nowhere without your tireless efforts. i believe that, eset. and i hope one day you come to know it also, as deep a truth as i have come to realize."

<3

His eyes glimmer. His lips bend and the red-tipped ears are eagerly drawn. For a moment the elegant look is gone. Senmut becomes a giddy boy in priest’s regalia.

She blinks and he’s returned.

Beneath the prince’s praise she is powerfully self-conscious. But not for her rank, her breed nor her sex. She had concentrated as strongly on Muat-riya as she knew how, and still it seemed the Gods had set the palace in their sights, countering all attempts at peace.

“Tread safely, Erpa-ha,” Eset bids after affixing a smile.

It had become autumn and the winds were devouring dried leaves from trees. The earth was receptive to the dead, and Eset only wondered at that as she made to blend with the thickening palace shadows.