2/26/2026, 11:19 PM
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Were she anyone else, barring Pharaoh, Mekh would have dismissed her faith in him as sorely misplaced. But the word of Merneith was sacred, and he bowed his head and accepted her words in silence. Although the world around them grew cold, a budding warmth had begun to bloom in his chest as he dared to think he might have a chance at something greater than his roots.
The sussuration of cool sand beneath their paws filled the quiet as they walked together.
I am from a place not unlike this,he began, then offered a half-chuckle.
Albeit a great deal hotter, understandably. Dunes as far as the eye could see, and great structures exceeding even the height of Skyspear. A river flowed through Seti's holy land and gave us life.
Her questioning almost made him uncomfortable, however. He did not often speak of his parents, a topic better suppressed in his mind, but it couldn't be avoided beneath her steady gaze. It was her gentleness that made it only just tolerable.
I never knew my father,he admitted.
My mother would not speak of him beyond a brief mention he held station in a great army somewhere far away. I do not think they loved each other; I think it was...
Mekh felt disgust even alluding to it.
She was beautiful, you see.
Hot shame rose like bile up in his throat.
She was also a slave. Before she gave birth to me and my siblings, she ran; she ran far beyond his reach, choosing death in the dunes over his affections. I hardly remember childhood.
Hunger he did remember; a vicious hunger clawing at the walls of his belly like a feral beast, sleepless nights spent beneath the stars huddled together for warmth, the ragged breathing of his littermates. Mekh never knew how she'd done it. How she had kept them all alive for as long as she did.
We became separated in a violent sandstorm; some passage of time later I was discovered half-buried in a dune, fattened up, and thusly gifted to Seti for his birthday,he said.
I have never seen them again.
Them referring to his lost family. Mekh preferred to think they all perished in the storm rather than endure any more of the half-life they had lived. His mother forever away desperately hunting, skin stretched taut over her ribs, his siblings' high keening echoing out into the empty desert for meat that would not come.
Would it be overstepping... to ask you the same?
