“The sunset…” Malik sighs. “It’s like light can’t be here forever.” He shifts gently around. “I’ve been thought to see it as the beginning of Ra’s journey through the 12 kingdoms of night.”
Bakura blinks softly as Malik’s words keep making that fluttery feeling go through his stomach. “What…”
“You know,” Malik starts, resting his chin back on Bakura’s chest as he starts tracing with his finger on it, “he travels 12 kingdoms in the sky during the day and then another 12 in the underworld during the night.” While he says so he draws a circle on Bakura’s chest. “He makes his journey on a holy barque so that's why it's seen like a river loop. And in the point where it intersects with the Nile forms the horizon. Akhet .”
Bakura’s eyes are fixed on the darkening panorama, but he frowns at Malik’s last word. “Eh… what?”
“Akhet,” Malik repeats as he keeps retracing the circle with his finger. “The hieroglyph.” He draws a rectangle over the circle that has its upper side overlapping with the circle’s diameter in the centre. “The place in the sky where the sun rises.”
Sunset 𓈌 Sunrise by sunstreamandmoonlight (read on AO3)
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He squinted, cursing the bright sun drenching the edges of his overhang. The dried reeds fractured the rays - it reminded him that he needed to swap them out for a fresh matting soon. Ah, I should tell my wife, she's been getting itchy hands from having to sit around so much.
The thought made him smile fondly. This was, Hathor willing, their second child, due within days if the local priest was indeed right.
Idly, he gestured protectively over himself, muttering a short prayer. It had been a few years, yes, but the pain of discovering that his beloved home village had been mauled and utterly ransacked while he was away buying more wares still made his heart clench in sorrow. Not even anyone left to mourn them!
Had his home not felt like it was haunted by some terrible demon, he would have checked to see if there were any kinsmen to bury and at least leave a hastily-scratched prayer on a shard of pottery. As it was, he bolted, running as far as his grief would fuel him.
Forgive me, He begged, to whomever would listen, for the upteenth time, Lead them home.
Preoccupied as he was, the merchant missed the sight of a small hand sneaking off an onion from the front of the neatly-stacked pile. It only alerted him when the rest started to roll off the papyrus mat from the admittedly unskilled grab. He gasped, launching across to grasp at as many as could be caught without leaving the rest of his food unattended.
It left him sprawled over the onions, clutching at a pair just skirting the edges of the mat. A mean, childlike laugh distracted him. He scrambled back to his threadbare cushion, indignant. It didn't take long to find the source - a dirty mop of hair so light it looked bleached of colour.
"Hey! Give those back!"
The child hummed, taking a mocking bite out of one onion, other perched in the roll of his hand on a hip. He reared back at the unsettlingly familiar gaze, The smirk of Kul Elna, the man thought numbly, Everyone always thought us prideful. It was a look scarcely to be mistaken; even his wife complained from time to time of it being harboured on his own features when he was winning at a game of knucklebones.
"...How about no."
By the time he had gathered his thoughts, the strange child was gone. It would not be until many years later, staring in fear at the giant demon ready to crush him and his family amongst the burning wreckage of their home, that he realized not everyone had died.
