awakening

 she could not say what it was that caused her to stir in the debris—but the Gods willed her eyes open. she flexed her forearms and felt above her—underground, she was underground! memory came quickly, but she did not panic. Toula clawed away at the things that stood between her and the world, and forced herself free.
 and then, once out, she began to dig and call for her people, all of them. gold caught and reflected the light of the sun, and she was given pause. her husband, her children! “we live! we all live!” she commanded the Gods to work their magic, to make this so!
 she reached for her sons, her daughters, her husband. “we must free our people from the earth, come!” she insisted—they could not be dead, would not be dead!
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gold the burn of sunlight! khusobek shouted, bellowed as a stabbed steer when pharaoh's paws disclosed the sand from his very eyes. a brawny arm hauled him upward, and then another; the crocodile clawed himself onto dry land.

 where was this? captain's instinct caught his bearings. a desert gilt with daytime burn; he squinted. but this was not the land once walked. this was not the blue hall of quiet water nor the redsand trails.

 breath. he lived. he was made whole. khusobek marveled, testing his unburdened flesh with long strides.

 pharaoh fell to her knees in the sand, and without thinking, her captain beside her, removing the tawny grains in hard movements of roughened paws.

 and all the while did his heart wonder and his spirit fear, for surely they had come up to the Land of Reeds. what had been was not. they were remade.

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 gods favoured those who walked beside them. gods rewarded; Amun with His outstretched hand had rent senmut up from the flood and he writhed horrendously in the sand, freeing one arm to place carefully in the dunes the seal of the Apis Bull. how he had come to have it at all mystified the man.

 what was this place? his mouth could not form words. he stumbled up, glancing to the sheen of familiar red, and tilted hurting eyes to the brilliant sky.

 "what has happened?" muttered the priest to no being; he shut his eyes and attempted to remember.

 a haze. a pain. they had come up unto — and realization drenched senmut in shock, dropping him back to flimsy haunches.

 how great the gods! how good their plan! he touched the lacing at his throat and reached to caress the seal in numbness, unable to speak nor to move.

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He’d followed a cat.

The bobbing of a dark tail in the dark, in the red stone, in the dunes. It allowed him rest when he collapsed, allowed him to eat momentarily before it drove little teeth into his ankles. His head was spinning as sand swished beneath his feet. His mouth was dry, growing dryer by the minute. Heat burned against his back, driving into his throat until it ached and burned.

He shut his eyes against a slant of sunlight, but it didn’t seem to matter. It burned straight through his eyelids. Heat burned into an inferno, and the sun itself descended from the sky. Akhtar threw himself to his stomach, prone before the great glory of Ra.

Irimaatenbast, hummed the cat.

Go to them, priest of Bast. Home is gone from you.

He didn’t know how to answer, because his voice was gone. Akashingo, his home, his home-! Why had he left! He opened his mouth to wail in despair, but nothing came.

Earth, it cleared from his eyes, and he clawed up from the sand with a mournful wail, sinking to his aged knees in the sand. Except they did not creak, and he looked at himself to find he was wrapped in deeper tones, the tones he’d once worn as a youth.

“What..?” He asked no one, but his eyes searched, looking for-.

“Senmut!”

Younger than his boy, now, but he loved him all the same. Even if he was far removed from the grey stippled man he once had been.
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Safiya did her best to get who she could out. Then she had remembered only darkness. But now she could breathe she could move. Little by little she pushed at the stones the Rock's. Groans leaving her lips. Finally, a sliver of sunlight hit her good eye and she growled at the onslaught.

She wiggled and finally with a sharp inhale pressed from their ground cavern. She stepped into the bright sun pained, but alive. She set to work. Body in motion. Reaching behind her for another. Digging at the debris. Her scars and wounds did not pain her. But she still only held one eye. Pennance perhaps for her vengeful thoughts.
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 The purification was carried out. The chosen were cleansed in primal waters. Faces were washed in the River of Nun, in which Ra himself laves his own face. Rashepses rose up from the sand and proceeded to the high point before the grace of Ra.

 There the King stood by himself, laughing.

 “Behold, our Majesty’s glory!” Black silks leapt from the dune to enclose Toula in a rush of affection. “We endured— and we remain forever, meryt.” He pressed a hot kiss to her jaw then turned to see their people, electrified at once to know their good servants were reborn.

 “Khaem!” Blazed his voice of fire, “bring forth the Crown Prince.”

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 birthed again! at some point he had bit the inside of his jawline so badly that blood stained his mouth; he refused to open his eyes as someone dug him from the sands, pulled him up on legs that shook.

 but his eyes were for his sister, his brother; were for neith, and he stared down at his arm still beneath the sands — his breath came harshly as the boy clutched desperately to whatever was beneath.

 he did not cry for mother nor for father; the sun scorched down and he gasped beneath its conflagration, trying to make desperate, horrible sense of anything as he tugged at his arm and began to dig with a resolutely desperate face. his father's voice was a booming call, but khaemwaset could not find his own voice!

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 "neith! look for me beside Osiris' hand! i will be there! i will be there!"

 At dawn, she passed a hall where music and dance and wine flowed freely. Fine-boned figures in gilded drapings sang and cried out their revelry. Through the incandescent lights they turned and beckoned for Neith to join their feast—

 But the sounds of harp and sistrum ceased. All eyes fell upon a single emergence from the crowd. Dancers parted, an aisle of mist opened up between He and Neith.

 “Pardon me, my Lord, have you seen my brother?”

 He; whose cheeks flushed with wine and chest clinked with row upon row of quartzite and lapis-lazuli;
in whose raven-eyes there appeared to be a faint glimpse into eternity, rejoined with nothing but a gentle grin.

 Then, he bowed his great head. The songs began once more and Merneith was falling through mist into vapor, into water, into dust, into sand.

 Kicking, clawing, Neith wriggles her way through the earth; small head breaching for a gasp of air.

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Claws scratched through the hellscape that had been the underside of the earth. Fighting, pressing down on the flat surface of dirty sand with all the might that was his weight. His mighty head tore through the ground in its break, coughing, trembling on all legs.

He was not sure where he was, only that the light was ever bright and that voices cheered. The noises were muffled behind a thick static in the guards head. The world was a new breath, the Pharaoh's rejoice was heard in voice, and yet how could it be appreciated in that very moment? Where? Where!?

Mesen-ka's care for them dwindled in that moment, standing once more, digging and biting to pull rocks away from the surface. Searching through the rubble, desperate, unyielding, smelling for his children to rip them from the underground if they were trapped. Where were they? Oh, where were they? "My gods, please. My gods, please." He prayed in whispered, heaving breaths, hardly able to stand and yet willpower urged him to continue searching. They needed to live. He needed them to live. "Do not take them from me."
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The ogre-girl floats in darkness. It is neither cold, nor warm. Along her form—her limbs, her head, her body— there is a pressure. It does not crush, nor does it hurt. It is a constant awareness, as thought she drifts through water. The girl is weightless through this eternal dark. She passes through it as though it was a dream.

She knows what it is to see, to hear, to smell, to taste, and to touch. Her eyes do not open, her mouth is dry. Her limbs grow heavy, whatever she had been drifting in grew dense. It restricted her. Distant, there was sound. The vibrations reached her, faint as they were. Laughter echoed from another place.

Who was it that laughed? Did she know them?

Compelled to learn the answer, the girl drew in a breath through her nose and was met with sand.

Golden eyes snapped open to have grit thrust into them. Earth pressed around her lungs and sand poured into her nose. Her body screamed for a true breath. For air. Every fiber in her being instilled within her the desire to fight, to live. Her legs churned, paws scraping and pushing through the earth. She was not sure whether she faced up or down, but she would not lie still and succumb to this grave. There is sound. She reaches for it, chasing the only tie she had to life.

An auburn paw breaks free. Hope flares within her chest. Someone takes her outstretched hand and removes the earth from her face. She sputters and gasps, desperate for breath. The desert sun is blinding, the air hot. Blinking fiercely, her eyes well. Not just from the sandy tomb she had be excavated from.

Looking down upon her was the face of Mesen-ka, her father. When her lungs fill with air, a pitiful, relieved whine sounded from her.

“Babaaaa!” She snivels and removes her trapped arm to reach up for her father. Tears stream down her face as her heart soars. She would grasp him in a tight embrace before looking beyond him. There was pharoah, semer-wati, the prince, the princess, more!

Her mouth opens, and from it she cries for a face she does not see. “Ibrahim!” She whirls away from her father. Did she not last grasp her brother in her arms? “Ibrahim!”

“Aiman?!” Where was her littlest brother? “Ibrahim! Aiman!”

Taliba turns to the claw away the earth, desperate to find her brothers. She could not bear to leave them behind.
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 annoyance was foremost in tavina when she was unearthed from the sands. she gasped and clawed her way up; her eyes were singed by the sun; she swore and staggered. devoted mind was pressed into helping to drag others from the earth.

 but there was no eset.

 she set to handing out dried fish from her healer's pouch which had miraculously come through with her, murmuring in more atheistic fashion of where this might be. but tavina did not forget that she had at last prayed to the gods of her kingdom in the eleventh hour.

 the Land of Reeds. was this it?

 how could it be? there was no eset?

 angered tears stung her eyes in knifelike fashion. tavina busied herself gathering objects together, shaking sand from them and assembling their number for transport.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiaVFg8U6rU

---

she'd been swept into the maw of serpent lake, swiftly and fatally. but instead of the pain of being thrown into rocks by the ruthless waters spilling into the last of her memories, she'd sprung awake as back cracked against the red rock and nothing more. but she couldn't move, see, nor hear. wriggling did nothing, only shift the sands that trapped her. these confines wouldn't last.

Ra greets her first before all, welcoming her to this new world with a kiss. blinking, confused, and yet the nebet couldn't be happier. once her torso was freed, her arms hoisted the rest of her aching body out, and immediately racharra ran towards her people. her family.

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A high pitched buzz droned in his ears. Ever present, Briar could not recall why it was there. He remembered panicked screams and the echoes of destruction. Why did his ears ring?

There was a stillness to his body that he could not seem to shake. It was as though he had lain down to rest after a long day of travel. If he tried to feel past the gentle peace that settled within him, he could find traces of a bone deep ache. One that split and pierced. Naturally, Briar leaned into the gentle, pleasant feelings. There, he would float. Hollowed of all that hurt and stressed. Hollowed of himself.

Drifting in this space, the emptiness within him grew. Would he lose himself to this feeling? The thought turned pleasantness into unease. It sparked a desire to fill the void. He did not wish to become an empty husk.

Briar twitched his toes, willing his limbs to move. His motions were met with resistance, but he persisted. He continued to reach forward, digging himself out of nothingness. Each passing second he felt more. He could discern the grains of sands against his body. The sand was warm, presumably from the sun. The darkness behind his eyelids brightened, and the droning within his skull began to fade away.

Breaking free of the desert's grasp, Briar coughed and gasped for breath. His head bowed against the sun, the world around him far too bright to open his eyes yet. Facing first into his own shadow, Briar cracked open his eyes. His ears tuned to the nearby voiced of his packmates. Slowly, he lifted his head to look upon them.

He saw families and friends embrace. He saw the rush of joy upon the faces of many. The determined eyes of those that continued to scour the desert sands for any buried stragglers in this foreign land.

He grew bitter. There were none for him to rejoice with.

Nonetheless, the noble remembered his place. Setting his jaw and adopted the most dignified posture that anyone covered in dirt could assume, and set towards his packmates. He would assist in digging for any other survivors.
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