Two Eyes Cenote i'm a waking hell and the gods grow tired

not sure where this fits in the timeline. he's looking for eset but all welcome <3

it is eating him alive; chipping away at his soul and weighing down his heart with stone after stone. his truth, kept tucked beneath his teeth, trying to claw it's way out until meseba can no longer keep it contained.

meseba's steps are weighted, gaze guarded, chest heavy and breath choked.

the landscape is blurred as he rounds a cenote, his focus singular as he seeks @Eset.

She lays on a mossy pew beside the cenotes, back against a stream of filtered light. Spread out in the lea beside her are some of the old hand-carved glyphs she’d found in the recesses of Akashingo’s catacombs and had carried with her during the move to the blue palace. Many times these shards have been studied, and now she scrutinized them again and again, hoping to find something useful– something missed by generations of devout scholarship. It was easier than permitting her mind to obsess over other things, or the torturous wait of the other shoe to drop with Herod and his men.

Eset Glances up to see the mazoi moving towards her with intent in his stride, and the hebsut is quick to right herself, greeting the guardian with a fixed bow of her head as he nears.

“Meseba, is everything alright?” Her voice is eager, for the look cast in his eyes spoke of something leadening.

there is a part of meseba that tells him it is not too late, to turn back. to keep the words and feelings like trapped wasps behind his teeth. but he recognizes that monologue is borne only of fear. and that fear, when death came for him, would only cause his heart to sink against Osiris' scale.

the timing is all wrong, but his future has never been a clear cut path. he did not know where the roads would lead him. thus far, they'd led him here. they'd led him to Osiris and Sopdet. stark had been afraid but meseba? meseba was meant to know what he wanted and to let it be spoken to the world.

regardless of what, if anything came of it.

eset rises to greet him and meseba's heart hammers so hard in his chest he fears Osiris might rise to claim it far too soon.

eset i — his voice is thick, cloyed with the things he has been trying to keep hidden. care for you. i have grown to have feelings for you, both were perfectly acceptable. but instead he rasps, gaze steadier than his uneven heartbeat. burn for you.

he holds his breath then, for a breadth of a moment, wrestling with the fact that he wasn't embarrassed even though that pessimistic voice tells him that he should be.

i have for some time now, he murmurs. i just ... needed you to know. in case the assassination attempt went south, in case he lost the nerve and never spoke of it again.

Both of them silenced, as with a spell, and the quiet pulsing of blood, her chest jumping while the green of his eyes lit with both the reflections of the cenote and the gloss of her own– like a river of flames in his forests.

“Meseba,” she breathes her surprise, throat burning with the reawakened name, struck with how much she does care for him– how she’d come to rely upon the strength of him; his mind, his company. And at once she fears the idea that she might ever lose him.

“I–” the low voice falters, amber eyes glazing with fluvial sheen as she looks up into the face which holds no distress; and in that moment she is overcome with just how firm the mazoi is. She steps forward, a single black paw hovering for a reach. “I care for you,” a whisper, quieting to a tremble.

“But– I do not know my heart,” she admits at last, overwhelmed. She could give no future to Meseba. Belonging to the gods, she would never again endure such failures as a woman.

Even then what remained unspoken was how she was pulled in ways she had no understanding of to others– confessions she would not– could not make.

The grace of her ears fall, she looks high into the man’s handsome face, searching his steeled grays, burning to offer her ash and fearing most to see a dismantling in his evergreen eyes.

“Meseba,” again she whispers, hand fluttering then for his arm.

the only thing meseba expects is to feel the weight lifted off his chest as his confession being spoken aloud to her. but he does not. instead, he feels every second as it ticks by, feels the fast beat of his heart within his ribcage echoing like it was amplified.

he is quiet as she speaks, holding his breath even so he might not miss the trembling whisper of her words.

she draws nearer and reaches for him his body aches; it's origin his heart.

her hand on his arm. his breath expels itself from betwixt his lips in a soft sigh. he knows in that very moment that he would worship her, if she let him. that he accepts any and every part of her: broken, ashes, whole.

eset, her name is a tremor as it leaves his own lips. loving you, even if it is only ever from afar is enough. he speaks in the hopes of assuring her that he has not been frightened off, that he would not run off and sulk. that he would go no where she did not command him to.

she knew now and meseba was free from the torturous prison of his own making he'd kept himself trapped in while he'd secreted it all to his chest.

Her arms wished to hold, eclipsed by the beauty of his words– by the beauty of him and the desire to be someone’s, if not her bud’s. Her spirit felt deceived by the warring mind; the discordant tune of her longing. But never could she idly watch as Meseba’s love atrophied for a woman whose heart had gone rigid; whose eyes turned elsewhere.

“Please–” it is a true pain which beseeches in her cry,  “please, do not bind yourself to me, Meseba. I cannot make you happy.” Not in the way his lionheart merited, nor in the deepest, untold nexus between wife and husband.

“It is what you deserve, a beautiful, full life– it is what I want for you. Please understand, it is what I cannot give.” A sinking chill on her brow, a chest severed in fatal ways. He did not ask this of her, and still she refused to see him surrender those most precious experiences. Her clasping arm holds fast as she hears the tremor in his voice.

“Please do not forsake your love,” her voice is aching, almost too low, the amber wavering in sickness with all she could not be for so deserving of a man.

she beseeches of him things he cannot do. and as she pleas with him, meseba cannot help but wonder if she knows this. if that suspicion or knowledge is what causes her to ask such things of him. that spell had long since been spun, intentional but there; woven into the marrow of his bones.

that is what you believe eset, he counters in hushed but firm tones; the twitch of his lips soft, warm, understanding. you have already make me happy. you have accepted me into your culture, you have renamed me. you have given me purpose and showed me the way to Sopdet and Osiris.

i forsake nothing loving you. perhaps it was selfish to confess such things to her, seeing the way it appeared to cast her into an internal war with herself. his peace had not been meant to cause her such war. he dares to move closer, wishing desperately that his touch, if allowed, might help to give her peace.

i am your devoted mazoi. always.

“It is what I believe,” her nods are fierce, eyes brimming with a fresh glisten of tears, “you disagree, now. But will you say the same in months to come?” Meseba was much too assured a man to cast doubt upon, she knew. Yet she could not bear to imagine him lying alone for nights after his long day’s laborings, abstaining from any other woman by her own wildering nature. Would he not come to resent himself, if not her?

He nears, reaching for a field touch, his broad body a sensation of security. The tears tremor then spill.

I am your devoted, and here in her mind it read: I am your sacrifice.

Her breathing staggers, “I want only for your fulfillment. Not your regrets,” The murmurs wane, she looks into Meseba’ face, searching for the traces of his soul that could be read upon the roughened features.

meseba watches her tears with a knife to his heart, knowing he is the cause of them; his expression threatening to shutter. to turn once more to stoic basalt, a forge sculpted achilles. a cursed midas whose touch turned everything to precious but cold metal. but he has already been vulnerable with her, he trusts her too much.

everyone else he could shut out. but not her! never eset.

i do not live in regrets. at least, not anymore. not since the night he set off from greyjaw hollow and never looked back.

She does shudder, though with the gentle consolation of his calm. Somehow she’d come to anticipate retaliation, or force. She’d expected the same wrath of Akashingo’s jodai, or the firm order of a man outranking her.

The coy’s arms are perhaps kinder to release him, though she does not, instead wrapping a paw closer; to be held tighter. Meseba is a strong tree, proudly stoic in her rain. And for a moment she lives in his rich, imperial earth, seeking the vulnerable depths of a soul which he shared with her.

“I am sorry, Meseba,” she whispers quietly into his fur, sensing the subtle inflections within the muscles of his chest; the flex of arms. Like a tree holding strong against a thousand storms.

she holds him closer and meseba relishes in this proximity to her. it is the opposite of what he expects her to do, admittedly; but he takes this moment cradling it close to his chest where it nests against his heart. it might be the only moment like this and meseba is determined to cherish it.

the feel of her breath against his fur, the feel of her shoulders against his chest.

the words whispered into his fur; quieted.

you never have to apologize to me, eset. you have nothing to be sorry for.

<33

Didn't she? How could she be moved to accept his words, despite how certain his voice?

Eset knew no secrets to subdue such turbulence, but in the moment she allowed Meseba’s cavernous calm to drape her in it and leaned among the soft touches of his chest, calling on Hathor to bless the man; that he would never live with such anchoring regrets as she feared.

The green eyes are bright like torches and she prays they never lose such a spark. She sighs deeply into the silver furs, her own hand upon his arm gentle, like water softly falling on a smooth stoneface.

he does not speak further. he stills his breath and quiets his mind to anything but the feel of her hand on his arm, the lean of her against his chest, the shiver of her sigh against his fur, fanning across his flesh.

and despite his brave words, there is an ache in his chest as he observes the knowledge that this might be the only time he gets to hold her. like this. or ever.

but he has said his peace and she knows his heart and now he lets his fate, whatever it may be and what it might bring to him, to the Gods and the cosmos.

a brief moment that feels stolen; but would be coveted like a precious secret he dare never part with.

you deserve to be happy, eset. you deserve everything you want and more, murmurs meseba, breaking his silence. and i hope you find it. truly.

She need only look into his face of sincerity to feel guilt twisting inside her once again. Before, she’d felt so certain. Now she did not know what she wanted from this life.

Her face was hidden from his now, her voice aimed at the clasp of her paws around his shoulders. “I want the same for you. You are so deserving of it, Meseba.”

There was assurance in this understanding. It eased the leaps in her heart some to hear it.