Starglow Basin fifty-second

Akhtar listened, took every word and wrote it on a scroll settled in his chest. A great drafty library of failures, each one more devastating than the last. Senmut pleaded with him with just his eyes, and the priest smiled gently.

Senmut. He turned, slowly, to face him completely.

You so readily say things to apply to me, but not to yourself. He reached out with a gentle hand to prop the boy’s chin up. Let not his crown fall from that furrow of a brow. The brown of his eyes was a deep mahogany beneath the stars, his face in a gentle smile he hardly ever wore.

My blood, your blood, both of us. We are ordained, Senmut, in priesthood. Ordained with the blood of gods, with a line to them should they wish to speak to their people. He reached down, pressing his nose to the boy’s forehead for only a moment, as though a benediction.

You are a child of many, a child of gods. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.