---

Something tickled the end of his nose, and Mekh opened his eyes.

Expecting the comforting glow of amber sands and the warmth of the sun upon his brow, he was surprised to see naught but a sea of white.

It felt - cold. Startlingly cold.

Was this a dream?

Standing up on long, thin legs, the coywolf shook a layer of snow from his tawny pelt and looked around with an air of perplexed curiosity. This must certainly be a dream, he thought, for it would have been impossible to reach a place such as this on his own. Mekh would not abandon his Pharoah, his Seti, his very raison d'être - so he would pursue this interesting fantasy with a casual air of nonchalance. As a lazy smile wove its way up his cheeks, he tested the snow beneath his paws with a satisfying crunch, fascinated by its chill and texture.

So much like white sand, yet entirely unique.

His head swiveled to take in the surrounding landscape. Tall, frigid pine trees loomed overhead, their shape foreign and unnatural to the coywolf - not at all like the spindly palms from home, he thought. A strong gust of wind whipped at his fur and he shivered.

It felt so real.

Mekh remained nonplussed. He would surely awaken soon.

What exotic strangers might occupy this all-too-vivid dream of his as well, and what impossible stories might they have to share?

He tilted his head back and howled. It wasn't fully wolf, nor was it the exaggerated scream of a coyote, but the sound lingered somewhere between the two in a strange and unsettling way to those unfamiliar with its origin.

---

Kaemsekhem
3-3-3 OC

---

bold italic underline

---

Naw, what the hell. The dark wolf struggled to stand up against a thick layer of snow, his voice raised. Livid didn't begin to name how irritated he felt. Snow clings to his short fur, making him walk and trot slowly. Weights bearing down.

It was cold, so cold. There was a thump,

The gray wolf had landed himself straight into a pile of snow. Covering himself head to toe in the cold demise. Then he heard a howl. Actually it didn't even sound like a howl. Like a mixture of a screech of a coyote and an awo from a wolf.

What?

What even made it bizarre, is that he recognized that sound. One he couldn't.. understand. Why was it familiar?

Oh what the hell –

The guard would stand on his paws, ears pinned to his skull as he went towards the cry. Snow tugged at every tuft of fur. He was not having a good time.

So he.. moved his legs with the weights threatening to pull him. Kaemsekhem got as far as.. a tree before he had to rest. Leaning his shoulder against the bark of a pine tree. A deep sigh, chest heaving. Why the fuck was snow so difficult?

CRRAACCCKK. PLUMP! (Just the snow fell down on him, can be a cracked part of a branch)

His muzzle tipped upwards. Before he knew it, snow toppled down off a branch. Right onto him. Kaemsekhem was not like a fancy snowman. Why.. Why. WHY THE HELL DID HE FIND SNOW!

He fell asleep in SAND. Sand doesn't mean SNOW.

You've got to be kidding me. He gruffed in a deep voice. As if he submitted to the snow. At this point it had claimed him. Who was to stop the snow for what they wanted.

Sabast watched his own exhale form into a cloud on the air, inhaling deep lungfuls of the frigid alpine air before dropping his jaw and sighing a fresh plume of fog, once and then twice. No one else was with him at the moment, and a childish wonder at the bizarre landscape he was lost in had briefly taken hold of him.

How strange it all was. He'd never seen so much snow in his life.

He tilted his weight on his paws, feeling the snow crunch and melted ice trickle against the pad of his paw, sending a shiver down the man's spine. Nope, never mind. Sabast snapped his jaw shut, a vicious sneer slithering across his expression as if to make up for the brief second of simply existing. This place was awful, even worse than the southern sector of the land he'd already traversed.

But Kemet would not reunite itself, and determining just how high the water was over their figurative heads was important. So Sabast scouted, never far from Seti's side - such was unthinkable, really, but this was a place of the unthinkable.

He was about to trudge further in a mostly random direction, eyeing the snow before him for any sign of pitfalls he was not skilled enough to notice even if there were any, when a gods-awful sound rose high above the evergreens walling Sabast in from all sides.

Pine. What a foul stink.

And Mekh, because who else could that wretchedly distinct coywolf call come from? Sabast scowled, sincerely weighing turning around and walking back to the Kemet group's current camp.

He didn't. He was loyal, if he was nothing else. Kemet was his duty. The Pharoah was his loyalty. What was Sabast outside of it?

Nothing, he knew already.

The guard was unfamiliar with navigating snow, but he was lightfooted and agile even so, picking his way toward the call with slight awkwardness here and there. When closer, Sabast sent up a series of short, quick barks - I heard you, I'm here, where are you?

The more of them that he could gather, the more protected and strong the Pharoah and his family were. That had to be Sabast's priority right now.

---

With idle wonder did the coywolf observe his foreign surroundings, shivering beneath a coat ill-suited to anything beyond glaring sun and hot, dry winds. This was certainly one of his more lucid dreams, and Mekh couldn't help but marvel at the minute details his mind had somehow managed to conjure up simply for the sake of a long nap. He'd always minded the details, spoken or observed.

The social dynamics of Kemet were less of an obstacle course to navigate and more of a series of interconnecting rivers to study as they flowed into and around one another. Some mixed easily, while others blended about as well as the Baltic and North seas with a dividing line so visible it could almost be seen with the naked eye.

Mekh wasn't quite sure where he fit in. Loyal servant and companion to Seti, yes - but to everyone else, he was simply an accessory, an oddly-shaped vase standing idly against the backdrop of their busy lives.

He didn't mind.

A halting series of barks caught his attention, and the coywolf recognized their origin. How intriguing! Why would Sabast be in his dream? Normally it would have been Seti himself, and they would stroll beneath a warm sun while the Pharoah would speak of politics and women and Mekh would be content merely to listen.

He changed course, spindly limbs trotting awkwardly through the snow as another gust of cold wind threatened to blow right through him. By the gods, what was the purpose of this frigid dream?

Hello, Sabast, Mekh greeted casually, as if nothing were amiss. You look quite dour today. What's the matter?

---

Tall ears and a pointed face appeared soon enough, key features of the coyote heritage that gave the servant such a marked silhouette. Sabast waited for Mekh to approach, the only evidence of his waffling toward impatience the twitch of his tail with it was left to swing loosely at his hocks. There was little reason for posturing right now, and Sabast had other worries beyond throwing his weight around.

A sentence he'd hoped never to have to think, honestly.

He liked throwing his relatively insubstantial weight around - the rush of power, the firelight flickers of pain, the pulse of adrenaline sparking in his blood. He hadn't been born to fight, but he'd grown into that heritage just fine after all.

Mekh remarked completely neutrally on Sabast's expression, which had the unfortunate effect of making the guard's expression wrinkle with a suspicious and generally displeased glare he directed somewhere in the distance to avoid scalding the eyebrows off the servant. I look normal. He sniped, just to be childishly petty, mostly focused in the wet and cold feeling of ice melting between his toes. He was used to shifting sand grains, or sometimes the unfortunate grime of the fertile mud that lined the great river squishing between his toes - refreshingly cool but rarely frigid.

Sabast's golden eyes lifted from the tree he was staring into submission, sliding across to land properly on Mekh then as his head tilted curiously. His expression smoothed slightly, although the wrinkle between his brows and on the bridge of his muzzle were mostly permanent. ...Everything is the matter, right now. Have you found any others of the Kemet? One of the princes and the princess is still missing.

He fought the urge to flinch at the murmured failure that whispered at the back of his mind when he admitted some of the royal family was missing.