Lion Head Mesa [sc] eighty-second

@Machiavelli -- i know we already have one so this is optional/at ur leisure!

the crowd fell into thronging, back to the palace, here and there.

senmut did not know when he had separated from nazli's arms; he did not know where he had gone, only that he felt sudden Ra hot upon his spine, his arms, and realized he sat atop the mesa, limbs raised to the glowing golden air.

here was where priests came to be reborn, this vast stretch of stone where royal flesh — and that less royal — had been mummified in the heat.

the pink drink swirled in his veins, eddying pools of unbidden light and whorls of shadow before his seeing eyes, transforming the world below akashingo into only pulsing hills of red, yawning earth.

where Ra walked. senmut felt lightheaded, giddy; he laughed aloud, his tongue wanting water but his heart desiring only to fall into the gilded center of the very sun.