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.