Lion Head Mesa Primrose

There was no fear in him. Why should there be? He had always known it for himself. In the secret lochs of her heart, in which no crocodilian brother basked, Neith had known it too.

The throne, it consumed Khaem with a passion. There was no rest in him. He looked as though he could have parried the realm’s most celebrated warrior. Where once he sat he would again. Pharaoh, he would be called. None would question it. His eyes on her limned in ancient gold. She felt it growing in power all around them.

But Neith was a stranger to herself, turned to divinely carved alabaster for no reason she could explain. None by her name had brandished the crook and flail. And the suspension lingered, this moment eternal, the tick of her lifetime; present, future, rising in rhythmic ecstasy.

I am a Queen; the thought persists– no– “I am the Queen.”