killing is overwhelming; dying might just be your thing (rule 63 bakuratem)

[shegypt]

[ New moons are Bakura's favorites.

How could they not be? Less light, less sense of being watched over by something ineffable and yet uncaring. And so reliably they appear, cycling through the sky, faithfully permitting the people to mark their calendars by them - as if something regular is, by its mere ordinariness, made more worthy of enshrining.

Bakura sees things differently. The moon always returns, yes. But, like an egg swallowed by a snake, it always disappears, too.

She reappears in the capital, in the palace, on a very special new moon indeed. With all she's learned on her...pilgrimage...it's easy to infiltrate, now, for not even the guards notice the Beautiful Festival of the Valley has obtained a guest who, if not uninvited, was unexpected. After all, what is there to see? One more supplicant, hood up, flowers held in one jeweled hand. If she slouches over she might even trick people into seeing someone other than herself, someone who isn't out of place in a shendyt. She's not built to Egyptian beauty standards, and besides, she likes her new red coat.

Nothing's changed here. She hadn't expected it to. People are still getting drunk off their asses in the name of holiness; people with more power are still trying to figure out how to snatch it from people with less. The boy people once had tried to get Bakura to befriend - let the foundlings stick together! - until he proved to be such a pompous ass she tried to drown him in the lily pond is, true to the stick that's been up his butt since birth, lecturing some peon or other on propriety. Being scolded by the old man who's taken him under his wing.

Bakura is going to kill that old man last.

No, her target is elsewhere, will be somewhere there's no clamor, because she's all about duty now, isn't she, duty and honor and family and nobility, and it's a good thing Bakura hasn't eaten yet because she just might retch (psyche, she thinks it's funny, but in a fashion that makes her want to break shit, which is how most of Bakura's humor goes nowadays). So with that in mind -

Ah. There. Cornered by the administrators who review the year's taxes, doing business even on a holy day, how terrible, surely someone must rescue this captive Princess. Bakura tosses the flowers she's holding onto someone's memorial - she doesn't even know who; these aren't for them, anyway - and slips around from the back.

She's tall for a woman. And the Princess is short. ]

Barley tithes and goatskins! Now this is a party.

[ Her grin is feral, crooked on one side. Nearly slashed through by a scar she hadn't been sporting when she'd snuck out of this very palace, an eternity and yet no time at all ago.

When she sees the administrator's face spasm like he's trying not to notice curdled cheese, it's like she never left! ]

Comments

[knifemonopoly]

[The high priestess of the three gods and eldest daughter of pharaoh Akhenamkhanen, Ankhsunatem, does not have it left in her to care much about the phases of the moon. They measure the days of the month, marching unstoppably on, signaling dates for festivals and religious rituals and collection of a portion of the crops the temple's land has produced and deadlines to distribute it all as wages to temple priests and temple scribes and workers and builders and servants and architects and the tasks feel as innumerable as grains of sand, even on a holiday.

She has dutifully led the statues of the gods down the river on the barge made for them, she has dutifully recited the names of her ancestors, and she has dutifully returned to the palace, where the administrators' words are going in one ear and out the other, because all of her attempts to get a word in edgewise have been met with a yes my lady but-- and she's not certain how to handle it besides letting them blow themselves out. Her posture is usually excellent, and even now it can only be read as a slump if you know her, but she's more tired than anyone should be at one of the year's big parties.

...until a very familiar voice speaks up from behind her, a voice full of memories of escapes from lessons, escapades to places forbidden to them, afternoons of games, fun -- everything this conversation isn't -- and her back straightens.

She whirls around, eyes flashing.]

Bakura!

You've got a lot of nerve showing your face at a time like this...!

You should have been here twenty minutes ago. Before these fellows realized they had nothing better to do at the heb nefer en inet than to talk to me about temple business! By the gods, Bakura, where have you been? What are you wearing?

[!!!]

What happened to your face?

[Is she ok?? It doesn't look fresh, but...!]