Lion Head Mesa [m] signet

so let it be written.
ramesses heard her resoluteness and met it with a welcoming expression. the thin distance between them paled to nothing as he came forward. pharaoh did not question her.
in her was none of the guile that he had employed, and for what purposes beyond the both of them, beyond akashingo even.
pharaoh and lord of all, magnanimous — gentle; cupping her face in one softened paw that still thrummed with his own sinewed strength, as he had done with the gift of bahiti left for him inside the realm of his red kingdom.
power, in this, not in conquering as crueler men wished to employ against those who served. his own cartouche as such pressed into the wax of an eloquent want.
and once expressed — breath to her cheek and ear and the curve of her shoulder. and then he was turning, striding away, and nazli to follow.
through the throne room into the domelike space beyond, filled with his own precious things which glinted in the light shafting down through three ceiling-windows, pouring the light of early evening across the single plinth piled with the finery of pelts down that of a bobcat, thrown carelessly across the plush indolence of the entire space.
ramesses caught nazli with a laugh and set her atop the lush bounty, demanded in tribute by might of himself and his name, the both of them still well-wet and tousled; a quiet moment; a slow twirling of sage-scent, a worship even the highest and most holy priest could never know.