Chapter 38: A Hairy Falling Star

            There was a war going on inside Re. Part of him was a little boy who cried and howled and wanted his mama. Part of Him was the eternal Sun God who found the girl who had rescued His mortal avatar impertinent.  She was treating him like a child!  Of course, He graciously opined that she had no way of knowing who He was.

            For the moment He shrugged mentally and put her assistance in the same place as that of ants and ostriches.

            It was quite brilliant of her, however.  She figured it out by herself instead of being told by a spirit or a Greater Creature.  The spell on the cord of hair around His/his throat fought back against her demand to ‘rot’ but all life rotted.  All life decayed and the spell, to keep working, had to mimic life, and thus be vulnerable to death.  It was the way things worked in the Goddess’s World.

            The girl had them on her lap now and they could feel the water she fed them, bringing them back to themselves.  In the distance lions roared and then a long while later, jackals chuckled as they fought over the remnants of the big cat’s kill.  Or it could have been Anubis chuckling over Re’s predicament though He Himself might be in trouble with the King of the Gods’ priest slaughtering Everyone’s earthly avatars.

            The boy was truly sleeping now, sheltered and finally given enough water.  The God watched as his prison gradually, gently eroded.

**

            In the distance a blue star streaked across the sky, with a hairy star hurtling next to it, across Herself’s bloody belt, bright enough to reflect against the white and shining sand of the desert.

            Seers and Diviners, at Persepolis, and Siwa and in Jerusalem, all raised their eyes and their hands to the sky, most laughing at the silly, smiling round face that they saw, and bowed down to the peace and tranquility of understanding, raising prayers against all suffering. 

          At Alexandria the priests of Amun, who had taken up their rightful places as Great Houses in AEgypt shivered; the King of the Gods had granted their wish for power by not protecting any of the lesser Gods' and Goddesses' avatars.

          Cleopatra, all of three years old, sat on the balcony of her palace, a tiny little girl weighed down by the weight of double crown and gold and lapis collar that reached almost to her tiny waist, her little hands desperately clutching the crook and the flail that she had only known as her mother's, crying.

          She couldn't stand up any longer under the weight of the regalia and it pinned her to the tiled floor.

          Big, black kohl tinted tears ran down her face.  She was trying really hard to be a strong Pharaoh as the priests said.  But she missed her mother and she wasn't yet gone into her tomb, part way through the formal creation of her body for the afterlife.

          She raised her eyes to the two stars overhead and gulped and smiled through tears.