Two Eyes Cenote tyet

nazli smiles as she grinds some more of the dried ingredients against the stone.
her mind wanders. she thinks of rodyn of moontide, and the sea, and the sand where she and senmut had been together. the feeling of him. them, together. cold and shocking and warm and — swiftly her thoughts focused upon what she had said to the man of that village.
her work pauses.

do you think— she begins to ask something, but the words catch in her throat where they burn, and briefly nazli feels like she is her old curious girl-self. she shakes her head, still smiling, and moves the paint-paste to a shelf. oh, nevermind.

the hemet knows her role by now, she does not want to disrupt anything even if her heart desires something new or different; but then she hears khusobek in her memory—what is it you want?
she tidies something on the shelf, moves to another, goes to a plinth nearby and then back to where tavina is standing. here! ah, i was -- briefly, away from muat-riya and found some things that might be useful to you.

she presents a bundle of herbs, grasses, flowers, from the meadow. laying them carefully upon the small plinth jutting from the wall, so that tavina can inspect them. perhaps she knows of what they are? or they might be new to muat-riya entirely. nazli looks on with a distracted sort of hope.