“Here. Let me show you.”
The lure of Ra’s voice drew my eyes to the cosmos in his hair and skin, which was all of him now, like a figure from the void, and suddenly, I was transported.
I sat on Pharaoh’s throne, dripping with jewels, gold, and finery. The vast audience chamber was filled with people, all on one or both bended knees, bowing to me in reverence. I could still feel the pleasure from my coupling with Ra through the vision, but more disorienting, was that it was as though I looked out of new eyes and saw myself on the throne like a reflection.
I was commanding all slaves to be freed, commanding my generals, my priests, and noble court to distribute their wealth more evenly among those who had little, and the people loved me for it. A sense of pride filled me, for I was the cause of theirjoy, their salvation. I would reign for decades, centuries, never aging, never growing sick, beloved by everyone, while ruling over the most prosperous time in Kemet’s history.
Avatar of the gods, untouchable and adored.
“Yes,” I heard from Ra’s doubled voice.
Pharaoh? Me? The gods emissary on earth, ruling a kingdom with no end? It was a life I only could have dreamed of as a boy. It was the dream of all slaves, to one day be set free, and not just to exist as we were with a new title but to have some power finally where, in our lives as they were, we had none. And always did we promise we would elevate our fellows if we could. We would free them too.
I could free them. I could make it so no one would have to go through the hardships Meryt and I had just to eke out the smallest bliss for ourselves where we could find it.
It seemed more selfish to not choose that, and yet, beside me, I had no consort, no partner, no love, for if I accepted this offer…
I would lose Meryt forever.
“No.” I pitched sideways, returning to reality with a jarring tumble.
As I landed on the daybed, I hoisted Ra up to stay connected with me, so he was riding me while seated, still facing away from me. To my left now, I could see off the boat, and to my right, was the deck—where an archway had manifested in front of the captain’s chair, with Meryt watching us closer once more but still farther than he had been with Geb.
Damn. I lost ground by being tempted.
“No,” I said again, despite how it felt to get a taste of Ra’s celestial power and freedom. His searing heat was accompanied by a strange chill now like a desert night wherever I touched his galactic skin dotted with stardust. “Power like that… might seem like I could be selfless with it… but to choose it would still beselfish first. Because the core of me that is always free… is only ever Meryt’s.”
Yours, I mouthed to him, eyes only for my beloved, who smiled at me and repeated it.
Yours.
“But people change,” Ra hissed in his cosmic voice, and when he looked at me, the sun and stars truly gleamed from his gold and silver eyes.
There was something slenderer about him, feminine, and his right eye glowed brighter than the left.
The Eye of Ra. This was the wilder, more feral and genderless aspect of the god that proved the duality of the universe. The higher and lower pitch of his voice was a mix of male and female too. In that moment, he was neither and both in the same immortal breath.
And he rode me from that backward position, allowing me to feel the tight chasm of the cosmos that I had first only tasted, driving me deeper inside him like I might be swallowed by the void.
Ra brushed his left hand up my thigh, and frost erupted where his fingertips touched.
Shit.
“Time changes all, Nakht.” He brushed his right hand up my other thigh, spreading heat so intense that I feared my skin might blister like when Meryt gave me my matching scar. “What happens whenhechanges, hm? Or when you do?”
Ra spread the frost and smoking heat over more of me, at first by his touch, then it spread on its own, covering all of either half of me like a cross section between day and night.
Ithurt, but it also didn’t. I felt scorched and frozen but equally numb to everything save the pleasure of Ra riding me where his heat and cold met. As heightened as I was from the sensations coursing through me, amid the extremes in temperature fightingfor balance, my desperation to not lose this trial kept my release at bay.
And I was even more desperate now to make sure Ra finished first.
I sat up, startling him as he flailed to find purchase on his knees, only I kept him close so I could continue to fuck him with both of us upright, making it easier to reach around him and grab hold of his cock.
He had one in the shape of a man’s, but he had another entrance now too, between where I entered him and the fall of his sac. I alternated between stroking his shaft and fingering this new opening, this culmination of his forms like he was all of them in one.
As I thought that, horns grew from his head, ram-like but black now, and feathers sprouted in his celestial hair. The long, thin, tongue-like appendage on the tip of his cock returned too, teasing my pulse point with little licks when my strokes passed it.
Thrusting into him with renewed zeal, I reached around with my other hand so the first no longer had to rotate, allowing me to stroke his length and finger his feminine lips in fevered chorus. As Ra gasped and moaned in his whisper/hiss voice, I centered my eyes where they always should have remained.
