Lion Head Mesa [m] Elephantine

Everything about her was careful. His look scarcely betrayed such considerations as their eyes met over Nasima’s salves. She touched him, then. His muscles were stiff and sore under paw, but they gradually began to loosen as the woman worked laboriously to bring life back into them.

“It is magic, what you do,” the royal grinned, taking in a lungful of herbal air, still and receptive beneath the fellahin’s steady ministrations. 

“Petenet,” he named her then, in the ancient language, chin sweeping slowly over one dark shoulder to watch her elegant face in full.