Ptah rose from the daybed, his robe and loincloth reforming as he moved. He tossed the false beard into a basket beneath his worktable and retrieved a fresh one from a basket atop it that he clipped back into place upon his chin.
I rose as well to retrieve my belt, but with a snap of Ptah’s fingers, before I could reclaim it, it was gone from the floor and back around my waist. I could feel that the rest of my attire hadbeen straightened, my body cleaned and hair smoothed where it had been mussed. Even the gloss on my lips that I assumed had been smeared during the many clashes of our mouths was as fresh as when Ptah first applied it, leaving a polished, silky texture.
I was in no small supply of miracles for this journey.
“May I ask, my lord…” I approached Ptah at his worktable. “Where to next?”
With a nod, he looked to the wall with the window and its shuttered view that had so recently paralyzed me. Only now, to the right of it was an open archway like when I’d finished with Anubis, glowing with blinding light. “Into the primordial you witnessed.”
“What?” My trepidation almost made me stagger back, but I steeled my resolve and moved better in line with the archway to peer into its brightness.
To my surprise, its light dimmed, and what lay beyond was not the same view as through the window.
“Intopartof the primordial,” Ptah corrected. “You will understand when you reach your destination beyond the rocks.”
There were indeed rocks, reddish and ominous, as though this were the entrance into a great cavern.
I took a cautious step closer, for I thought there was something white near where the path through the cavern veered left, only as I drew nearer to the archway, the white thing leapt up and disappeared beyond the bend.
Understood, Pasht, I thought, for clearly that was where I needed to go.
“Thank you, my lor—” I began, but when I looked back, Ptah was just as suddenly gone as everything else appeared or disappeared along this journey. I sensed it would be a continuing occurrence, for once denied, the gods had other duties to attend to.
It made me wonder if my refusal of them wounded them or simply left them content that their creation could resist at all and prove worthy of my heart’s truest desire.
I would. Iwould, for my path was set, and at the end of it was Meryt.
I briefly glanced toward the heap of metal that had once been the doll.
At the end of this path wasmyMeryt, and I would accept no substitute.
I returned my attention to the archway and stepped through it onto the rocks.
The following chapter contains:
Cock Pocket, Sounding, Tail Play, Feather Play, Double Penetration, and Monster/Beast Sex.
Chapter three
The Shaper
MERYT
Death was such an odd concept to grasp. Not only when we were younger. At any age, it often didn’t feel real whensomeone we cared about took their last breath. We still expected to see them around the next corner. Still expected to hear their voice calling out to us from the next room. Days, weeks, even years could go by, and we sometimes honestly might forget they were gone, if only for a moment.
It was in the remembering that we most grieved, almost as if we grieved anew each time. It wasn’t always at its worst in the first moment, because though the person’s hand might have gone limp, we would cling stubbornly to it, even shake it, in the hopes that their stillness wasn’t the end.
At least for me, the first remembrance was worse than the actual moment when my mother’s body went cold.
Disease took so many each year, even in the safety and majesty of the palace. The gods could not always protect us, or rather, called some home earlier than others. When my mother first fell ill, she continued to work. She had been a dancer like Nakht and I. She had been a leader and still was a most prized example of our troupe, for she had trained each and every one of us younger dancers who had been coming into our own time to shine.
It had practically been preordained since I was twelve that I would succeed her, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon, me only sixteen and her only just having doubled those years. The last thing she said to me as Nakht and I gathered at her bedside, knowing the end was near, was, “At least I know you have each other.”
The priests had us leave the room so they could clean her before moving her to the chamber for funerary preparation. They would clean her there too, more thoroughly, and anoint her with oils. Before they moved her, however, after the initial cleaning was done, they allowed us to return inside for some time alone with her.
That was the true shock, the reminder she was no longer here in the pallor of her gray skin, the heavy limpness of her body,and how cold and stiff she was already becoming when I held her hand. I howled in that moment and wept like I was still a babe.
I was calmer again now, as Nakht held me while we both mourned over her empty vessel, yet it was in that moment that I did not wish to turn toward the owner of the arms wrapped around me. My mind felt sharper, and I remembered… yes, with sudden certainty, Irememberedthat another Nakht would be nearby.
