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He was starting to drift off to a light sleep himself, but he stirred at her mention of envy, almost rousing himself awake to argue with her.
“Perhaps it is better not to dream, as you say,” she continued with a sigh.
“At least, in my present reality, you belong to me and no one else. No matter what tomorrow brings, you will always be mine, Shai. You promised...Mine.”
Finally, she fell into a deep, untroubled sleep, and he did too.
It was always comforting to reaffirm the constants in their sometimes tumultuous existence:
He was hers. Forevermore.
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
Modern Day. Yukon Territories.
“What do you think, Seth?” Ben asked via video-chat in the privacy of his own cabin, detached from the main house where his parents and grandparents lived.
It was strange to be a human nearing his thirties with immortal parents who looked about the same age, and immortal grandparents who looked only slightly older. In fact, Ishtar, his grandmother, looked even younger than him.
Such was the surrealism of his life amongst Pure Ones, Dark Ones, Animal Spirits, Elementals, and the most powerful of all—dragons.
“I’m absolutely certain there exists an earth-born dragon in ancient Egypt,” he informed his friend.
“And that, if the JE were to send us on a quest to the past, he would send us there. The last two years of digging all point in this direction. The symbols for ‘secret’ and ‘gift’ are often found together, repeatedly, even intertwined, as I cross reference ancient texts that have survived to this day. When I triangulate further with the Pure and Dark histories, with the help of Eveline, Grace and Devlin from the Cove, the image of, or reference to,dragonorserpentappears.”
“And you just happened to stumble across all these coincidences, Benjamin?” the ever-equanimous Pure Ones’ Consul asked.
“Well,” Ben said, taking a breath and scraping a hand through his over-long hair.
“I was researching into ancient Egypt anyway for a Harvard lecture I was putting together. A study of the most famous Pharoahs across three thousand years.”
“Months into it, strings of words and symbols started appearing like lightbulbs going off in my head. Whispers of the ‘Secret Gift’ plagued my dreams. It’s like someone somewhere in the universe is trying to clobber me over the head. Something irresistible inside of me compels me to search for the answer.”
He frowned at the thought and voiced a sudden realization:
“JE or no JE.”
“Hmm. Three thousand years of history is a broad desert dune in which to be digging for one speck of sand,” Seth remarked.
“How can I help?”
“You’re Egyptian,” Ben blurted.
The Consul chuckled low.
“For a brief time in my human life, yes. A mere thirty years in three thousand.”
“But you know the history with an insider’s view,” Ben insisted. “At least, you’re far closer to the facts than I could ever hope to be, no matter how long I study.”
“True enough,” Seth allowed.
“What do you wish to know?”
Ben inhaled deeply and paused to order his jumbled thoughts.
Finally, he said, “I need to narrow the time window. I know the secret has to do with royalty, because of reoccurring symbols for the Pharoah. But I don’t know which one.”
“It might be helpful to identify if it’s a male or female Pharoah you are looking for,” Seth pointed out.
