Two Eyes Cenote Amduat

In the blue gloom of those humming halls Rashepses looked on the gathered coldly. Another pair of eyes might have glimpsed distress, but in silence the king saw crookedness, and its resulting heavy portents. The angular faces with its many sharp features raised high over neck, attention stolen by a part in the painted bodies.

Angel-like, the goldspun form of his wife, so soft and fair and shining through darkness, whose luminance spoke to him in memories of warm mornings and hot breaths. Her beauty and power alone was his to swill. But it was the lustful look set in the nile-eyes which rocked him with a wet swelling in his chest, a longing which brimmed as she drew within range for him to touch. He does not, instead bows low and ceremoniously before her.

“You bewitch me,” whispered a great restraint, eyes teasing as they flicker low on the plush fawning between her legs. His lips kissed one foreleg, and the other, the Semer-wati drew his wife to stand beside him.

He saw the restless faces and was gruntled by them. “Gather, so I may speak to you. In the year of our inception, Muat-riya has endured war, infiltrations, murders, kidnappings, maimings. The brightest have been cast down. Our women and children live in fear, our men powerless to shelter them against ceaseless assault, repeated again and again and now the cataclysm has spread to Akashingo. I am afraid the circumstances are dire.” It was then the sunstone eyes drew to his wife, though he was troubled to see what impression might be waiting there. No cause was yet revealed, nor how silence had fueled it– silence like a contagion in which the mind would not accept the truth.

“Nehebkau calls for His people in Akashingo. We will answer Him at once. Our journey begins before sundown. Go now, gather your things.”