the flood of the nile

  When the world ended there was only one thing on Nazli's mind: it was not Senmut, despite his voice shouting across them all, loud enough and passionate enough to make the walls shake; it wasn't her Pharaoh, her glowing golden queen who should have been protected, should have been put first as soon as that initial shudder quaked through the world; it wasn't even for the children who screamed or the fellahin to whom Nazli had been so selflessly devoted! Her only thought was of her daughter.
  Seeking the small red body, which should have been there beside her. That little girl who had grown like a miracle within her womb, granted to her by the very gods who were set now to judge them... There was nobody there. Nazli reached in to the dark and grasped at nothing, seeing a silhouetted body crushed beneath the cracking stones — hearing the struggle of bodies which had somehow survived, but had been pinned — knowing the voices of mazoi, of fellahin, as they became a din, and as the shadows came for them the silence came too.
  Nazli screamed for Aiesha even as the darkness took her.
 

***

  The lakeside was as silent as one might expect for a place of death and emptiness. Snow was falling rapidly, with each layer effectively sighing as it landed, these little whispers being one of the few constants; this literal white noise filling the ears of this coyote woman. Her body was limp and curled in to a ball, as if she had chosen this particular embankment for her sleeping place.
  Shuddering beneath the blanket of white, she comes-to slowly at first, and then rapidly with a kick of her legs and a gasping name on her lips — but Nazli's voice was a rasp. She tasted sand in her throat, except there wasn't any, not really. A memory of being buried, or a nightmare.
  Around her now was only the endless white snow of nothingness, only silence, and the darkness of a cloudy night. Her voice had failed; she had heard the way she had groaned the sound of her daughter's name and the way the snow had swallowed it, and she despaired. 

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 She was not the only one who dreamt of a child.
 As he rode, Temujin thought of his brother’s sons being born into his harem this spring. Qachuli’s dens would be filled with wives and bondsmen; a life that by rites should have been his. A khaan needed as many heirs as his gers could hold. It would be so easy to let bitterness prevail.
 One day it might.

 A high, echoing note rends the air. Jin skids to halt, changing course on a pivot. He nearly misses the figure as he vaults along the terraced fields, and would have if not for the violet which strikes his eye. There curled a woman, small; alone. She had not chosen her site well, here in the open with naught but her own body as a shield.
 Moving quickly to her side, the horseman knelt, listening first for breaths.
 “Can you hear me?” The wind all but steals the question from his lips.

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  Her eyes opened, ink black tildas set in to a gaunt face. There was an approaching shadow that swiftly eclipsed Nazli; she thought, 'this, this is it, the end...'
  "Can you hear me?"
  What? Who...?
  Her body was shaking with the cold, and with herself so numb and lethargic the woman could hardly answer; but she looked upon that shadow and saw the sharp profile of a man, or a god, and immediately Nazli began to weep! In this weather her hot tears steamed, and froze.
  "H—help m-m-me," she pleaded, stumbling with a heavy tongue and frozen lips. The air stung her face and burned at her throat when she tried to take a breath. This was nothing like the home she knew.
  What had she done to deserve this frozen hell as her resting place? Where was the field of reeds? Where was Nwt? It felt as though Nazli had been devoured by the void of the earth only to be spit out again in that empty space between the stars!

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 Jin would not spend more than a breath examining her. On the steppe, medicine is explicitly a woman’s practice, though the rider has enough understanding that she needs to be taken in from these winds at once. 
 “I’m here. I have you,” a frozen cheek is held within his roughened palm, shattering the glass tears over her fur.  There is no time to contemplate a heading, he pulls her slight body against him, maneuvering until she is braced along his shoulders.  With the prong of his nose her delicate face is adjusted into the thicker fur at his shoulders, then he is galloping flat out with the lilac woman draped over his back like a winter’s prey-skin. The white-out is bright on their faces as he rides, wild-eyed in pursuit of his companion. 
  “@Lyra !” The high call is carried far across the frozen brier. 
 The horseman doesn’t know how long she has. He urges the last breath of speed from his strides.

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---

On their journey to the mountains, Temujin had ridden ahead to map out their location. The abundance of succulents told her this place was typically warm, though the current covering of white said otherwise. The cold of the snow felt like needle pricks along the exposed skin of her scars, a sign of some prior torture she endured that she could not remember.

At the call of her name, Lyra lifted her head to see Temujin running over with a lilac hued shape strewn across his shoulders. As he drew closer, the shape began to form into that of a canine. “Jin! What happened to her?” Lyra couldn't tear her eyes away from the small body Temujin had returned with. The biting cold of the snow had begun its damage to the exposed skin of her nose and around her eyes, the skin red from irritation.

“We need to get her out of the cold.” She looked up at the man with furrowed brows, then at their surroundings. Maybe they could find someplace to wait out the storm? However, judging from the woman's appearance, they needed to move. And fast.

---

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  It didn't hurt. It was cold, scathingly so across her cheeks, but she didn't feel herself being lifted by the man.
  She wanted her eyes to be closed and wasn't sure if she felt them do as bid, except the air did not sting them as much, so maybe the woman retained some control of herself. The man is running; she can hear the way his breath huffs out of his lungs, and thinks she can feel the thundering of his pulse — but maybe that is the sound of his stride?
  All at once Nazli was nowhere again. It was dark and she was lost; but she heard the man call out, and a voice answer. It was too cold. It was too cold and Nazli was too weak. Her teeth were chattering and that was the only movement separating the woman from being a bolt of lilac peltwork between the two strangers.

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