He had a long, thin nose, but hardly looked the same as he was often portrayed, like an ibis bird, or more seldomly, a baboon. He had the same medium-dark skin I had seen on many of the gods, and he wore a gold wrist cuff like many of them too, but his bore no simple symbol. It was covered in hieroglyphics, I thought perhaps saying the same phrase that I had read on the pillar. He was the god who had invented them after all.
Thoth’s loincloth with attached wrap over one shoulder was made of pure white linen, but an elaborate gold and turquoise belt contrasted its simplicity. His godly collar was similarly colored, and along with his wrist cuff, he wore matching armbands. He also wore a turquoise ring with a golden ankh, a common symbol for all the gods, for it meant life and rebirth. His black hair was especially long, twisted into a braid over one shoulder with the end pooling in his lap, mostly hidden from me, but it was beautifully woven with turquoise threads and beads.
Movement to my left drew my attention before I could finish my perusal of Thoth.
It was me. My reflection. Caught in glass as pure as the translucence above us, but this was like the stillest water, replicating everything it showed in perfect detail, as though I had been doubled and stared upon my twin.
I had never seen myself so clearly before. Meryt’s words to me during our brief meeting were not untrue. I looked ravishing, so much so that I barely noticed my flaws.
Looking back to Thoth, I continued my approach. Atop his black hair was a coronet with a crescent moon in its center, like Horus’s eye after Thoth healed it. He had the fur of an animal draped over his shoulder atop the linen, which may have been from a baboon, but the only thing similar to the long thin beak of an ibis bird was the reed pen Thoth was using to write.
I would think him a scribe for Pharaoh, elite, yes, but not the god of scholars. He seemed too modest compared to the other gods, almost like a lie.
Thoth looked up at that like he had snatched the words from my thoughts. His eyes were his surrealist feature, turquoise like his adornments with silver crescent moons within. “If you are a reflection of us, Nakht, can some of us not be a reflection of you?”
“My apologies, my lord, you’re just so…”
“Not a disappointment, I hope?”
“No!” I assured him, finally finishing my long trek to his table. “Maybe a relief. All of the gods I have had audiences with have been immeasurably beautiful in their own unique ways, but there is also beauty in the simplicity of man.”
“I quite agree.” Thoth’s blue-green eyes scanned over me, and the crescents in his irises glowed. He glanced down at what he had been writing and finished it with a final pictograph, elegantly scrawled. “There. All finished,” he said, and waved hishand before I could decipher his work, causing the parchment to roll up, and it and all of the scrolls on the table floated off on their own to shelve themselves.
Thoth stood, dismissing the chair he had been sitting in too, so it flew away from the table to rest against a pillar. He gestured to the table’s now empty surface.
“Your turn.”
The clothing and accessories I had been wearing flew from me with the same sudden dismissal as the chair and scrolls, much like Geb had disrobed me, and I was bare, left only with my jewelry and the embellishments the various gods had added to my braids. I understood I was to lie down, but I did not expect a cleansing like what Anubis had offered.
When I sat upon the table to first lift my legs and then recline, I realized the angle of the reflecting glass was pointed in this direction to display me in it. How strange to see oneself so perfectly doubled.
I laid back, expecting the hard surface to be uncomfortable, but although there was no pillow nor angle to the table to support my neck, I felt oddly relaxed, even when Thoth stepped closer to hover above me. While standing, his long braid nearly reached his knees.
“Try not to move,” he said, ratcheting at least a little tension through me, “but if you do, fear not. You won’t spoil the work.”
Work?
With no palette to dip his reed pen into to replenish its ink, the tip of the pen bubbled with fresh pigment anyway as he brought it to the surface of my skin and began to write.
I held back a gasp, not wanting to move too much with the rise and fall of my breaths. The pen was sharp, its scrawling upon my skin what I imagined being tattooed must feel like, bordering on painful but never quite more than I could bear. What was strangest was that while he wrote only on the top side of me, Ifelt it through to my backside too, knowing an echo of the words were being painted there as well, leaving no expanse of skin.
Pain was not the only sensation his reed pen produced, however. Sometimes, where he wrote, the skin beneath felt numb, sometimes it tickled, sometimes it burned like too much time in the sun, and sometimes the way the pen moved in its elegant strokes brought indescribable pleasure.
I gasped again, as the warring sensations mingled. What he was writing, I had no idea, for even when I tried to glance toward the reflecting glass, I could see only part of me, and the pictographs were too small from so far away. I wanted to glance down my body but wasn’t sure if I was allowed to know the words until he was finished, and where he wrote was not always a place I could easily see without moving.
I knew it was phrases more than single words, for each time he finished one, he paused, just for a moment, and it was like a spell was cast. The words flared with heat and an even more intense pleasure, as if becoming part of me. Whether over a naturally sensitive patch of skin, like near my nipples or down my stomach, up my neck or across my cheeks and forehead, the same ecstasy compounded again and again, even when the initial scrawling of a phrase pained me.
I was close to coming before Thoth moved to my legs.
I felt no embarrassment like I had with Anubis, not yet understanding back then how the gods would tempt me, so I allowed the pleasure to course through my veins, enjoying Thoth’s strange scrawling, and the salute of my cock in answer to it.
Was the prerelease building at my tip enough to smear his work when it dribbled down my length to the skin beneath my navel? Or was I truly being tattooed?
Such lasting marks were usually only for women, either as protection for childbirth or in other rituals. Meryt's mother hadborne many: on her lower back and abdomen and across her shoulders. I had witnessed a few placed upon female dancers when they became pregnant, so I knew there could be pain, both great and merely enough to grit one's teeth over, and I thanked my time with Seth that any such pain was a mere nuisance to me now. And again, it kept melting into bliss.
I was panting before long, in a dizzying haze.
“I am a fan of your poetry, you know.”
