“Of course. You are Ra. Amun-Ra. Or… just Amun?” His names and depictions had changed so much in the course of my people’s history.
Ra ran his hands down and around the coil of his horns, manipulating himself to change again. Still blue-skinned, he became even more human looking, and his horns uncurled to stand upright, taking on the appearance of two large feathers upon a crown. This time, when he gripped either side of his head and lifted, itwasa headdress that he removed, and from out ofit spilled the most beautiful long, straight black hair I had ever seen.
It wasn’t purely black, free-flowing and unbraided, but shifted like his armor, with the swirling sparkles and colors of a night sky.
“Ra was the more mortal patron of Pharaohs in the beginning,” he said, as if speaking of a stranger, and as I watched, his celestial colors melted away, leaving him with plainer black hair, armor with less sheen, and brown skin the same color as mine. “Eventually meant to ascend and rule over the skies.”
He released his crown, but instead of it clattering onto the deck of the boat, it floated up and reformed upon him, keeping the brown skin but transforming him back into the ram.
“Amun was the hidden god,” he continued, “a creator, sometimes seen with horns, and first worshipped by Nubians. Then, combined as Amun-Ra,Ibecame something of both.” He did as he said the words, shifting to the falcon-headed man, only now with a sun disc crown. His skin returned to blue, back to brown, then to blue again, as if to say he could be any combination of all he had shown me.
“But which of you is the truth?” I asked. “Which is correct?”
Ra smiled again, seeming endlessly patient. “If I am a god, especially one of the sun, the day, the very thriving of life, how can I not be all those things, malleable to you? Or perhaps I am none but present myself as you choose to see me.
“Is the day the same every morn? With the same sun, the same heat it brings, the same life-giving presence or overbearingness? No. It too changes but is no less necessary. Do you agree?”
I sensed no trap in the question and answered, “I do.”
Ra reached for me, and instinctually, I mimicked him. After grasping my offered wrists, he ran his hands up the length of my arms. His touch was sowarm. I hadn’t noticed as much when hetook my hand before, as entranced as I was by him. “Then who would you wish for me to be, Nakht?”
“Among what you showed me?”
“Or others.”
A flash of Ptah’s Meryt doll appeared in my mind. I would never ask for that, for only the real Meryt was acceptable. I spoke instead the only truth I knew. “I would have you beyou, my lord, whichever you that you wish to be, just as I told Anubis.”
He squeezed the curves of my biceps. “And if I am, as I said, all those forms?”
I thought perhapsthiswas the trap, but if so, one worthy of testing its constraints. “Then I would have all your forms, my lord, each and every one.”
The falcon-headed god smiled wider. “Thenhavethem you shall. But as I am a kingly god first, Nakht, I would have you conquer me.” He squeezed my arms again, rotating his hands up and around my shoulders and spreading his heat wherever he touched. “Can you do that?”
I understood but also knew that my true trial, whatever it may be, still lay ahead. What a spectacle this would be for Meryt, however, and the joy of knowing he watched made me answer heartily, “With pleasure.”
As I took hold of Ra’s warm body and dropped us onto the bow’s daybed, his armor became like rays of the sun and melted off of him, leaving only his tunic, short and draped over one shoulder, and his eclipse-bearing cuff.
I laid him down, settling atop him, and ran my hands over his skin, as well as where skin and feathers met. They were no longer strange to me on a man, the texture soft and quite nice, and as I bent to claim the mouth beneath Ra’s beak-like nose, I thought his kiss no stranger than a man’s either.
His feathers covered him intermittently all down the backs of his arms, though not as thickly as those on Geb and with nodowny fluff, only firm skin, sky-blue and lovely. I had rested earlier but never before had I experienced so many encounters one after the other, yet I felt no ache nor protest in any part of my body, only the stir of fresh arousal.
I sank against Ra as I tangled our tongues. Maybe his kiss was stranger than a man’s after all, for his tongue was stiffer, firm and thin and long enough to envelope mine like it had its own hollow. I felt myself twitch from out of my loincloth, plump enough to spring upright along the feathers that lined Ra’s thighs.
He turned his head to break our kiss and said, “Tell me as we continue when and into which form you would have me change.”
I dragged my thickening cock higher up his thigh and under the fall of his tunic, but when I parted my lips to answeryes, I thought better of the response. “You ask me to conquer like a falcon hunts its prey?” I slid a hand up under his tunic too, guiding my cock to meet its match.
But there wasn’t one. Instead, there was a single opening between his legs, soft and yawning for me. I didn’t yet breach him, however, but slid my length up and down along the opening’s edges.
Ra bucked against me, metallic eyes fluttering.
“If I were truly the master between us,” I said, “I would not conquer at all but seek peace and partnership, asking with each new endeavor we embark upon whatyouwant.”
“Well spoken, Nakht. You mean to deny my request then?” Ra shifted, urging me to enter him, but still, I didn’t. I continued my slow teasing.
“Not if you mean it. Not if you want it. But it is not in my nature to conquer, my lord, other than in play. I live to serve, whether my masters or my beloved. So Iwillclaim you…” I let only the tip of my head slip inside him, eliciting a shudder fromthe god beneath me. “But who you are with me should be of your choosing, not mine.”
Ra licked his lips just as they began to change, his form becoming that of the ram-headed god, although the shape of his lips was not so different, not as much as the nose above, flat and black again.
