Rosewater Oasis up in smoke

you do not know.

his voice trails off. from the once confident bravado it carried, to something lower, deeper, sadder. he speaks as if there is gravel stuck in his throat. for a moment, he looks at the girl as if she is useless.

useless to him.

but then his anger subsides. reasonable sense tells him that it is not her fault. this... tragedy was not her doing. it was the doing of the god's. and so, with an incline of his head, the man moves. long legs carrying him away, but not without the flick of a long tail to beckon her follow.

he does not look back as he speaks, his voice steady, though it is the steadiness of a dam holding back a flood. come, racharra. we cannot linger here. the gods’ wrath have shaken the red sands. it will not claim us. you are one of the fortunate.

his tone softens, just enough to temper the edge of command with something gentler. and if they live—if my blood, my family, still walks this earth—they will be found. you have my word, as pharaonic keeper of the lotus sands; bid by she who has achieved ma’at herself. and he speaks again, now, the mutterings of a man driven mad by what has been robbed of him. a man who must rise through the soaked floodwaters that stains red with the blood of the divine. if the blood of the red sands is gone, then the weight of the gods falls upon me alone. their whispers echo louder now, binding me tighter to their will. if rashepses, if toula, if their young flames have been snuffed out by the desert's wrath, then i am what remains. the last ember of the divine bloodline, the final tether between the gods and this earth.

the gods do not mourn; they demand. creation and destruction are their tools, their gifts, and their punishments. now, it is samirseti who remains to shoulder their commands. the chosen. the blessed. the cursed. the weight of their expectations settles heavily upon his gilded shoulders, yet he does not crumble. for who else could rise in the wake of such ruin? who else could claim the title meant only for the divine? he is pharaoh of pharaohs, bound to their purpose, and there is no other.