10.27.01

bathie

Smelling the scent again, Wehemmesu vomited on the floor, leaving another mess to be cleaned. That stench now filling the room, nauseating him even further.

"I do not suppose you would like to stay here, Wehemmesu?" Merynebptah lifted the small boy in his arms as he spoke. "I am going to take you to my room." Rocking in the elder boy's arms Wehemmesu noticed briefly that the stars were shining down on him. The full moon looking down at him from the heavens, expectant. In the moonlight Merynebptah looked vague and ghostly, an apparition carrying him to his after life. He lay back in his arms, admiring him, smiling. Everything seemed strange as if through a fog, the grounds looking like otherworldly courtyards.

The wabu priests had tried to make him drink a sort of red dye when he awoke again, telling him that he had lost too much blood, that it needed to be replaced. He resisted them, insisting that the concoction was horrid, distasteful to his mouth. They mixed the dye with his fish and wine until the next full moon shone. The priests regularly changed his bandages, now mixing in malachite with the honey to make a thick green paste, every night they washed the wounds with scented water again, trying to keep them clean. Merynebptah had told the wab priests to ask Imhotep to give health to his brother.

Merynebptah's room gleamed in the firelight. The little round table he used to hold his jewelry and makeup stood on the far side of the room. His little jar of malachite open with its dipping stick leaning on it. All around the table little ornate boxes sat with their lids open, scattered about. Their contents melting in the heat, mingling with the faint musk of their owner left in the air. Perfumed unguents, ointments, tinted oils for the skin, little rings of scented wax. The scroll carrier's necklaces were strewn over the backs and seats of the small chairs in his room. His white linen skirts, folded in boxes under his small bed.

The little oil lamps flickered on and off every few seconds, warming Wehemmesu's skin periodically. The bath water lapped against his skin, leaving little drops to skate down his chest as the waters receded. He raised his arms out of the water to look at them, the wrists were pink where he had cut them now. The droplets from his fingers lightly fell on his face as he moved them. He shivered. On the other side of the pool he saw his brother bathing.

shi-ou-sama at 4:35 p.m.

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