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.

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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.

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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?”

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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."

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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?”

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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."

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“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.”

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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.

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“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?

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Mafdet smiles, a terrible glow of pleasure which tells of priests slaughtered willfully inside tombs, their hands cut off and blood splattered upon pristine heaps of natron.

her eyes caress the canine hips. lust was known, but mockery further; "no," and her purr dazzle with the press of a thousand spearpoints.

whipswift, paw flies beyond the worshipper, puncturing golden sands. a scorpion writhes on her palm.

Mafdet slams down its sting toward ushabti before a hopeful reaction might be seized, willing pierce for flesh.

poison. pupils spreading wide. she waits to see. "you dance with serpent's voice," came the goddess' command, breath limning the face of her new acolyte.

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Tired; fearful, drained of hope, Eset flinches and shuts her eyes. Mafdet’s own are too bright now. Fire-lit. When she speaks, she is fabulist and divinity all at once. Charging; omniscient, pulling back the veil to expose the secret depths of the servant’s ka.

It is not only Her words, though they are clever. It is everything altogether; Her face, Her body, the sliding tones of Her voice. A spell She casts and there is nothing Eset can mutter to equal it. That gift is feline alone.

“I fear for my honor,” she confesses with shut eyes. Her mind flashes in a journey of color. Umber, amber, turquoise, ice, gray. Violet. Her heart bleeds.

“Sometimes I imagine things. Sometimes I imagine pain— that I cause.” Down her face shifts. There is no pride when light is gone. “I love. And still I dream of fire. I have the voice of a serpent, Great Mafdet, and the heart of one too.”

Tears swell beneath lids. She forbids them to fall. Now she is only a creature for her Goddess' judgement.

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"you see?" the glittering white teeth are diamond-hard beneath a desert sky. "Wadjet knows all things. He sends his unworthy to me. i send them back." though this truly was not what she wishes for this one, not now. "you serve Mafdet now. you will be My priestess."

taking her from royalty decrees, paws set upon a gilded godsblessed path. was this not all desired by those devout? lips flare as if the confession is tasted, honey and figs against a long drink of blood.

"you are stone beneath the silk. and you have pretended not to be," Mafdet assumed, smiling in assurance. servant's-cloak over a leopard's mind.

sand cleaned from one long paw, and she passes it over her face in the manner of all felines.

"what is the name you bear?" if it is fitting, Mafdet might allow a small mercy. but if it is not —

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“Yes, Goddess.” A nose again low to sands. Beneath each skin of hers lays another, and here she felt the stopless claw of Mafdet peeling away layer from layer.

Now the coyote clutches at every word from the power who saw her exposed— flayed out beneath the sun in a way no one ever had.

And if she considered it, truly, this was a fitting end.

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"good. when you wake, I will take you to your people. and you will tell to them that you are My priestess now."

and Mafdet made well on this honor.

across the shimmer of sands she would walk with the woman, tail loosely curled, for she too wished to set eyes upon such a creature as had moved the woman.

one who knew how to worship was a treasure indeed, though she did not intend to admit it.

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