Cat Snake

Once, she’d heard the calling, and Eset had followed luneshale into the north. Calling, where she could not answer. Urging, where she could not follow. When she closed her eyes, it was always to the sesh’s medical room as she had last seen it. Emptied.

She wished she could be a stone, born without love, for she had learned the true price of this hollow, and there anger coiled when she was not weeping.

You did this! You made me love you!

And just as surely as fire came, it would subside again in tearshed. For a part of Eset was gone. She was less. The world was less.

Bring her back again. I don’t care how it’s done. I will bear it, gladly, I will hold it to me.

What was this life without sun? With her light gone?

As she stepped through unknown sands, she felt there was little reason to go on, absent of what she'd known before.

the staff team luvs u

she hunts.

she does not leave the oasis.

snakes fall to clawed paws. scorpions litter her steps. she sheds their blood as easily as she peels their carapace.

olive glowing, the threads of a distant tree turning skylight stare on a thin figure in the sand.

mafdet! she streaks across the dunes, not to murder but to possess.

serpent's-venom livens each vein to zinging flame.

the staff team luvs u

Once, it had been a gilded goddess who discovered her reborn daughter in the wastes. Eset had called her Hathor; later she was revealed to be Toula.

It is not Toula who finds her now.

But she knows this transcendent creature of ink and grain.

“Mafdet,” she utters, voice dry and crumbling more to shock and grief than the hardened desert air. She prostrates before her goddess like a serpent playing dead in the sand and thinks she may not ever rise again.

Eset still remembered how peaceful she felt that day when Toula and Tavina had delivered her from the desert. This was nothing like that.

“Great One,” she speaks into the sand, “are we in Aaru?”

the staff team luvs u

this. this she does not expect. arteries singing, Mafdet lets sand rush in a healing wave beneath her paw over the legs of this creature.

wolf, jackal, fox, coyote, all known to her. this one is a blend, a blurred thing in likeness of the desert deity herself.

aaru. "yes. all here are reborn." there is a slow circling, a cold feline nose pushed against pressure point of cheek and spine, toying with the snakehide necklet which hung around her own shoulders. "but you were not among them. no. you were left for Mafdet to find."

her grin is an ugly thing. "i trade Wadjet over and over. finally He gives me a proper gift." she bends low and close. "but if you are a scorpion, tell me now. i will break you in mercy."

the staff team luvs u

Them? It was not the goddess’ rousing but this infinitesimal flicker that dared to hope which finally parted nose from sand.

Her face had begun to burn, but not from pain exactly. It was that one by one all her dreams had slowly dropped away. She would share no eternity with Toula. She would have no marriage. She would never tell Tavina her intimate feelings. They would never live together as wives. Her affection for her would be drowned and fade.

Until— them. Eset was summoned to the exultant striations of the hunt goddess, weaving sharp and knife-bright over Her claim. Strange eyes held her and a nose, unearthly and small, reached for the vulnerable places of the coy. She did not move strongly as a wolf but cleanly, gracefully, like a whetted claw splitting flesh. Eset could not read the slitted eyes. They frightened her. Stories of mortals torn and conquered by angry gods spun her memory.

“No, Holy One. I am a servant to the gods.” Her throat scraped with loneliness, eyes attentive both on the primordial face and the sand She churned. “Goddess, are there others here? Others like me?”

the staff team luvs u

Mafdet paces in a tiny semi-circle made up of tiny steps. 

"perhaps." she had scented them. she had heard at least one name, and comprehended on baseline level that they were dedicants of another kind. "Mafdet will tell you. but what will you give to know?"

her rounded ears have heard eagerness, the exploited sauce of a dish made of flesh raw and cold.

goddess. holy one. "there is no one here like you. there is no one who understands what i am." olivine stare crinkles with another death's-head grin. "maybe i should lay waste to them. now," a purring, "tell Mafdet what you will give to find those like you."

the staff team luvs u

“Please—” Her eyes shoot fearfully to the stalking creature. No other moves as this; with habitual preeminence and the constant threat that a single swipe of paw would tear throat from neck. But it was not this fear which dictates her now. Eset’s heart leaps with the smallest hope. If she could have her life back then she would do anything; trade anything for it.

“I was personal maidservant to Pharaoh. I will tend to her Godliness in all ways; as an advisor, a royal stylist, an entertainer, a dancer. And I am painter, Holy One. I will immortalize your likeness and history in works of art upon stone. ”

The hebsut’s mouth goes dry. She fears all of it— she— is not enough.

“Please, allow me— to see them. Wolf-kind are prayerful, as am I. I will praise Her Holiness and your cause, and they will see fit to worship Goddess Mafdet in kind.”

the staff team luvs u

oh, the praise.

the taste of it pushes submission to her anger, and internally she subsides. but it is not what she wants.

she wants this one to remain here with her in the golden wastes.

but canines need their own, Mafdet remembers, She Who Travels Alone. a servant dragged to desert would pine and weep and later die.

"i will let you take Mafdet to this place. i will let you show them one time how Mafdet must be worshipped. but first, wšbtj, — ushabti, you will dance with Wadjet."

a hard paw hauls up the pretty pet.

the staff team luvs u

“Yes, Holy one,” she stands, bowing lowly once more. Did the goddess wish her to dance here and now? Where music was only wind? The hebsut was accustomed to fellahin chants, dozens of choral voices and musicians rattling snake-sistrums. She takes another breath of dry air and begins to sway her hips, eyes trailing up towards the feline face on a body which seemed to glide, rounded gold-flecked features lit by the same-toned sun in this uncertain light. The feline muscles rippled beneath the spots, enhancing every movement with ornamented dappling.

“I regret that I have no singer's voice in which to serenade you, Goddess.” Eset forces brightness into her face, tricking herself into a reality where she is dancing on the eve of Toula’s wedding.

But behind the spotted shoulder amber eyes trace a river, following it down into a valley whose point is hidden by a bend in the sand. Might they be there, waiting for her?

the staff team luvs u