Cricket Creek Bog hippopotamus

the drone of flies melded and melded until he felt he could hear the midday singing again, telling all to go indoors and sleep through the heat of the afternoon.
and then another sound cut through it.
ramesses blinked muzzily, turning his cheek against the sticking mud to regard the form of aditya, appearing from baked earth heat as if he had always been.
pharaoh himself had been raised in hotlands, but his months in the teekon had thickened his coat, and he laboured beneath it now.
"priest," he answered, smiling despite himself.