Lion Head Mesa Tiger lily

That evening, the servants had prepared the young royals for bed while their mother and father were occupied with visitors to the palace. Neith could hardly be persuaded to sleep, pouring over the ancient stories embedded into the walls of her room. The depictions are a soothing balm to the day’s lessons, one she looks forward to reading each evening by the gentle glow of Khonsu’s moon, sometimes with her siblings and parents.

But she is too restless tonight. The glyphs on the redstone blur, and after she’s studied the same sacred writings several times without comprehension, she pushes up from her lynx furs and slips silently past her mother’s assigned fellahin towards the wellspring.

“I would like some privacy, please,” she says to the two mazoi guarding the baths and they oblige by bowing staunchly and turning their back as she enters.

The water in the spring shimmers a deep blue-iryt, fragrant night-blooming lilies sleep upon the surface that shines as mirrored glass. The amiirad peers into it like a vanity, curious.

Her fur is ghostly white, edged in the night’s cool reflections. Her eyes look back upon themselves, glowing deep and dark. The short legs are not so willowy and elegant as Mother’s, but are straight and strong.

Face flushing, she lifts a paw and smooths it down the length of her arm.

he had another sister, khaemwaset knew, when his eyes were not filled with the darkling antelope girl over which father and mother had already whispered their intention. he did not know this, only their bond; he spent his days fawning after satakhetem, bringing her tiny gifts, ordering the servants to fetch some pleasant morsel or another. all to see her laugh. all to see her smile.

khaemwaset enjoyed his entourage, but not when their voices so loudly praised him. the young prince grinned; he sent them away down the scrubbed corridors, and sought the tendriling of neith's path where she had went away.

his eyes saw how in her believed solitude, she admired herself. khaemwaset admired her as well, considering the mother ordained by gods who had given life to them both.

his reflection shimmered beside her own, suddenly, her opposite. carved from nightfall and gold leaf, he grinned his spiked smile and showered her with an abrupt cast of down-feathers.

in soft-snow breaths, they floated down around he and neith, and khaemwaset watched them both in that still reflection. "a swan. i made the mazoi let me kill it."

Beside her reflection appears the stoic dark prince.

“Oh, Khaem!” She breathes, hand dropping. He has seen her a hundred times, but there is a vague sensation that she’s been caught at something private.

Ridged in gold, he is elegant. Beautiful, in a wholly otherworldly way. Like daddy, but somehow sharper. If she and Den were a dulcet pair, then Khaemwaset was her inverse; a yin of shadow to her sunlit yang.

She loved him. Loved him just as much as Den, if in a different way. A shiver trickles over her spine. The golden sister could almost feel her crocodilian brother alive in the night’s shadows, watching, even as he was fast asleep in bed.

Suddenly they are locked in cascades of shimmering ivory! The girl gasps, blinking heavenward through feathers born aloft with gusts of girlish laughter! She whirls breathlessly and catches the fair plumes upon her crown and the backs of her paws!

“It is beautiful!” She smiles broadly, first to his strong profile and then with an adoring list of cheek as it rests upon the obsidian cut of Khaem’s shoulder. The last of the swan feathers fall around them like glimmering stars through the moonlight.

In silence she gazes down at their reflection, stroked in the gentle rippling of the softest eiderdown. She’d spent so little with her brother as his affections were always for Satakh. She felt in some ways Khaem was more a stranger to her than brother. So she soaked in the time they had together now, allowing her eyes to explore every curve of his proud face.

“I see a king. A glorious king of the shadows,” the amiirad whispers with a grin.

"a king." khaemwaset smiled, though the expression did not reach his kohled eyes and gave the boy an appearance of sternness there in his gaze. a feather rested silken upon one eartip, and he watched his hand in the pool's mirror, reaching almost to flick the pale wisp away.

it accented the precious hue of her eyes, khaemwaset decided, and let the swanfeather alone as neith's praise radiated around him, uplifting the dark prince. "den is firstborn. you heard father and the high priest," came his reminder for her ears. there was no reason to scold; he only affirmed what he and neith knew.

once more they gazed together into the pool; he felt her eyes move over his reflection and found it more bearable than if his sister had only stared into his own face. he was proud beneath her perusal, flashing some early imitation of rashepses' brash grin.

den was firstborn. but that did not mean khaemwaset could not be king, and he knew it, these embryonic ambitions nurtured further by neith's confidence in him. "do you not want to be pharaoh, sister?"

father was powerful. eyes admired him. hearts adored. he commanded akashingo and even the storms bowed to him. and mother was pharaoh. the Horus Throne; yes. khaemwaset wanted to sit there one day, and he had no need for a king beside him. he would have a queen.

“Do you think I'd make be a fair one, brother?” asks the girl of their mirrored reflections. The coyness of father. The sincerity of mother. And even now, the close clutching of her own political hand to chest. She descends into the awaiting warm waters, the pull of an arm inviting Khaem to join her.

Mother was Pharaoh. The amiirad was raised with little notion of demarcation based on sex. But what was always made clear was her betrothal to a prince, and so the idea of supremacy as a partnership had been rooted in the girl’s mind.

“I will be a Queen,” Neith proclaims, chasing the quill of a perfect alabaster feather upon the silversheen surface. Her wide eyes sought Khaem's gold, mirth lingering in their red depths, naive also to the intentions of future engagements.

"yes. i do." khaemwaset saw not the details, the interweave of toula's power with that of rashepses. he had not seen satsu and rameses, nor rameses and treva. he saw only the throne which appealed most to him, pushing aside all the framework upon which thrones were predicated for his own self-interest. such things were built. he aimed only to have.

he splashed neith a little, teeth shining in laughter; "who will be semer-wati? father called to the storm. i heard his voice in the clouds."

voice dropped to conspiratorial whisper; "there is no one like him."

each of them, set apart for their own purposes.

She returns her brother's smile with a beaming grin that lights up her whole face.

“Maybe daddy always will be,” Neith supposes. So little of her girlhood had been spent concerning future titles. It was morbid to think about gazing upon Akashingo’s thrones one day and not seeing mother and father sitting there. But she’d been contemplating it now since their naming ceremony, newly awakened to the inveterate purpose of she and her siblings.

A cheek turns quickly away from her brother’s cheeky play, reproving his plashes with chuffs that strive to be quiet. She flexes a small paw and cups a feather as it passes over her rippling reflection.

“Daddy doesn’t look at me the way he looks at you and Den,” the amiirad expresses in her own secret whisper. Neith had never acknowledged it before– truthfully, because she sometimes felt more like a decorative emblem to her brothers’ divinity. The girl had learned in her readings this was the supportive role a Queen was to embody, but it was not the incarnate power of her own mother.

"mother and daddy are gods. and they are like the gods," khaemwaset said quietly, watching as one of the downfeathers floated upon the pristine surface of their sacred waters. "maybe they do not see us when they look at us."

but neith was right, and khaemwaset wished to give this a moment's thought as to why. he sent the feather gently pirating toward her on a small swell of crystalline waves.

"daddy wants us to be different," the amiir asserted at last, kohled eyes finding that of his sister. "but den looks at you as he looks at no one else. not even mother," khaemwaset claimed, wondering if neith would find scandal in such words. he would find that enjoyable, a secret embellished until she was happy again.

“But… why?” The question lingers in her throat. Momma was always generous with her love. She did not favor one sibling over another, as daddy seemed to. It hurt the girl’s feelings in a way she did not quite know how to convey, except that she wondered what she could do to earn more of his time. A sulky sigh drafts the white sail back towards Khaem as the amiirad submerges deeper, glassy surface cresting the narrow shoulders.

“Den protects me. He always has,” garnet eyes drift north towards her shadow-brother. Deep, abiding Love was so prevalent in their home, she could find no fault in her brother's affections. Should he not look upon her in that way? Curiosity sought the bright lambent stare that seemed already so much more learned than she. “It is not so different from the way you look at Satakh.”

Glumness cloaks her delicate face. Khaem, her own dear brother, whose regard and attention was wholly focused elsewhere. She wanted to ask for more of him, and in the same breath knew that such meekness would look absurd on any royal child.

“You know I love you Khaem, don’t you?” She pads toward her dark counterpart, to push her damp golden crown beneath the arch of his jaw. It must have been the first time she had ever said it to him. Did he know?

And does she make him feel similarly forgotten? She never wanted her siblings to hurt on her behalf. She closes her eyes and envelopes Khaem in a hug. If her brother was amused by it all, the princess Neith was too young, or otherwise too naive to know it.

"i know, neith," and a lump gathered in his throat. it was sweet to hear these words; for some reason khaemwaset found himself deeply moved by what his gilt sister had said without guile to him. "i do not understand all father does. but do know that i love you too."

already his heart perceived that there were old secrets in this natural world of their own, things he did not know, things he must know. and khaemwaset further sensed that between mother, father, sister, brother, a world of power existed which was not able to be touched by any else.

"and i will protect you also. and den will protect satakh," he breathed out; an oracle; a pronouncement. "we are what we have." he did not know why he said that. it sounded nonsense to him, and the prince splashed again the surface of the water to hide his great unease.

he wanted laughter, games, diversion.

She pushes her lips to his dark cheek and makes a sound like a sigh, soothed in knowing that her brother had room in his heart to love her, despite daddy’s apparent lack of interest.

“I’ll always be with you, Khaem,” the amiirad makes her own vow as something warm, and affectionate enhances the red of her eyes. She releases his shirking shoulders and mouths an ear, getting a good tug in before romping quickly to the other end of the spring, face glittering with childish amusement.

cool to fade here since they have a new one <3

"and i with you, my sister."

water sloshed around them, emblematic of the container in which royal children lived until the day they were ready to assume some responsibility within the kingdom which had produced them.

there would be no knocking on the proverbial glass. khaemwaset existed where he wished to be.