Blackfeather Woods amulet

pharaoh was not bored.
adored and pleasured within akashingo, he was loathe to leave it.
and yet he was a cascade of rich linen against the backdrop of a hot evening.
ramesses stared at the tangled and eerie beginning of a forest teeming with black birds.

The hunter moved through the flatlands at an unhurried clip. The heat of the evening brought his forked tongue out in metronomic panting. Hot air settled over the horizon, sent ripples through the treeline.

If he noticed the golden man he gave no indication of it. Khenbish's demeanor was sleepy-eyed, opiate, but a current ran beneath the langour, a certain hidden tenseness.

His dark gaze flickered from side to side. His mouth was dry. A great lapse in the world seemed to have caught the both of them, suspended in time and temperature.

it was horrendously hot, but pharaoh had been reared upon sand and stone.
his passage into the darkened forest was unhurried, and welcome. the cobwebbed shadows drenched him suddenly in shade.
but he was not alone. there was an odd creature panting nearby. with a growing interest, ramesses noted the coyote-narrow features, and lust sparked its ember in his body. "no need to stand in the stare of Ra. come with me, into the forest, where we will both be cooler."

Noiselessly, he turned to look at the stranger, whose dark blue eyes turned to black in the shaded enclave of trees.

Yes, the pale hunter obliged. He approached the other man with smooth strides, each shoulder blade cycling over his back with every step, one after the other. I have never known heat like this. I grew up near mountains.

Tavan Bogd was a place where, millions of years ago, tectonic activity had creased and splayed the crust of the earth with such violence as to rend acres of land into peaks and valleys. Glaciers scraped their massive bellies against the Earth in a speed measured by the passage of generations. 

How strange for a creature so sedate to have arisen from a site of such geological terror.

was there something amiss with this one's tongue?
ramesses did not know, but at the moment, would not be seen staring at the other's lips. for now.
he pressed grandly on into the twinkling and half-lit darkness.
"i have only known heat like this. i was reared in the desert."
the royal, passing his curious blueblood gaze across the other with open appraisal.
"what brings a man down from his throne in the mountains?"

The desert. Yes, you look it. His mouth took on a ragged and impish edge. There was a liminal smile that passed briefly over his face like a comet on an orbit incremented in centuries.

The long Egyptian face was dappled by saturated shadow. The golden genetics visible even in the half-light. He spat dryly. Pah, throne.

He turned his whittled face away, a muscle working in his jaw. Er khuniy zhargal ezgui kheer. Happiness is in empty mountains. The language still came easy to him; he wondered when it, if ever, would congeal.

I do not want happiness. I want more than that. The sun dipped further, now bisected by a cruel horizon. A sharp red flare danced where its disc met the Earth, lighting twin spots of flame in the hunter's sloe eyes.

yes. forked as the tongue of Apep, He Who Devours Himself and is Reborn. ramesses did not recognize the language that flowed like a jagged river from the other. but he heard its tone, and smirked, the curling of paper held too close to a flame.
and what a flame it was.
more than happiness?
"you want purpose."
pharaoh's tongue darted to wet his own lips, watching the glint dance mirror in the other's eyes. "i had to find my own."

The golden man licked his lips; Khenbish thought it a very base and animal gesture that sat strangely on the regal face. He gave no indication as to whether he noticed the man's unabashed scrutiny.



That is admirable, for someone so young. He noticed that youth was a viscous vapor that clung to him, and sparked a flammable luster in the indigo eyes.




Nekhii would be about the same age. But his cold body had long since been laid beneath inches of dirt and ash, existing in pieces inside the bellies of vultures and crows.


A man searches the world for a purpose. He finds one. What happens next?

"he takes his purpose and he allows it to mold him." ramesses did not think he had been called young before. he had drawn up into stiff columns of gold-dust and alabaster, unsure if he should take offense or not.
but the other was too beautiful to find upset!
and so pharaoh relented. "my purpose is to seek pleasure. i dedicate my body to the gods."
a grin, and he was flickering away beneath the eerie branches.