Silence. Then a roof tile tipped
from the hole in the roof, above and bounced off Asteri’s horns and shattered
on the floor. Naida flinched and turned
to look at the woman beside her, who had her arms around Asteri’s neck, crying.
Then to the man sliding down to sit on the floor, Horus staff across his lap.
Sybaris swayed, and then collapsed
in a pile of coils. Naida gasped and ran
to try and catch her head so she not hit the floor with it, and pulled up her
belt to try and stop Syb’s face from bleeding.
She… she was badly burned. All
around her mouth… closed mouth… how bad was she burned inside? Every gemstone she had on her scales was
cracked or discoloured or just melted off her, and she was raw all down her
front, all her coils where she’d grabbed the Djinn. Her hair was half burned
away, with melty drips all down her back.
Naida started crying as she tried to help, realized her own palms were
raw and bloody. She laid her hands on
Sybaris and willed that she get better.
The Horus staff twitched out of the
man’s hands and flew over to Syb and Naida.
“Tsk,” Re’s voice came out of the beak.
“I don’t like my friends getting hurt.”
There was a soundless thunderclap
along with a flash of light that rattled lampstands all across the city and
when her sight cleared, Naida could see that everything had been returned to
wholeness.
Bodhi sat, cross-legged on the floor
by the litter, next to the lamp, hands softly folded. “I could make some tea, if you liked. Or we could just sit for a while.” He smiled, sweetly.
No hole in the roof. No melted gold cheetahs and burnt tiles. Nobody’s hands were raw. Nobody’s body was
burned. Sybaris’s hair flowed down in
its old glory and her gems shone bright as her eyes as she opened them and rose
to her coils. “Well,” she said, and
bowed to the woman wiping her nose surreptitiously under Asteri’s wings. Then
she bowed to the man climbing to his feet, using the Horus staff which was again in his hand, as a prop as
if he were very tired.
“Candace,” she
said. “Consort.” She turned Naida around with the tip of her
tail and Kurama hopped into her arms.
“My name is Sybaris and this is your long-lost daughter, Efra, though
she goes by Naida to honour her—“
The Candace let out a shriek and
flung herself down the two steps, around the empty litter, and caught Naida and
Kurama up in a hug, lifting her right off her feet. “It was you yelling ‘mama, daddy’! Daughter! Oh my strong girl, my beautiful
girl!”
People were peeking around the edges
of the doors, daring to enter after all the ruckus and Amani-shakhete turned
Naida around to face them, throwing her arms around her in a hug from
behind. “Behold, Meroe! My daughter Efra-Naida returns just in time
to save us all from a mistake I made twenty years ago!”
“What? I did?”
“You did,” Kurama whispered in her
ear. “Your mama caught a Djinn and
locked it up, apparently. It just nearly
got away from her.”
“Oh, my,” was all she could say,
just as another pair of arms wrapped around both her and her mother. She looked
up into her tall daddy’s eyes and at his enormous grin, old, old seamed scars
running over his shoulders and she just knew he’d gotten them trying to save
her. “Hi. Daddy. Mama… it took me a while but I’m
home.”
“No
more ‘dirt girl’ for you,” Kurama whispered in her ear, as Asteri spread
his wings over all of them and Naida started giggling. No more
dirt girl.
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