Page 8 of Sett and his King
Sett
"Are you planning to spend eternity here, Father?" Anubis asked me.
I turned to look at my son, standing by the gates of my chambers and took a deep breath.
"Why do you care, Ani?" I asked.
Anubis sighed and approached my recliner, taking the chalice of wine from my hands.
"Because I love you, Father, and I don't want to see you waste your immortality grieving."
I snatched the wine back from him and huffed.
"I've already spent five thousand years. What do you think is going to change in the next five?"
"You're impossible." He groaned. "I know you loved Father, I loved him too, but that doesn't mean you have to stop living. We've been over this. Father wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your days mourning his loss."
I hid behind the rim of my chalice, the full-bodied red nectar feeling almost like blood against my lips, but its magic was in its effect. It made me forget.
"Ani, shouldn't you be judging some poor old dead souls? Let me fester in peace."
His hands turned to fists and I almost laughed. He always got so angry at me when I refused to listen to him. But it wasn't my fault. I couldn't find it in me to leave these halls, to do anything in fact, without him.
It didn't matter if it was five thousand years or five million years. My love for him would never perish. And the pain of losing would never subside. My life had ended the moment he’d been killed.
"You're a stubborn old man. And Father would be ashamed of what you've become," Ani said.
It wasn't anything I hadn't heard before. It wasn't anything new. It used to hurt. Time may not have eased the anguish of his loss, but it hadn't definitely rendered words immaterial.
"Perhaps. I guess we'll never know," I answered.
Ani brought his fists up to his mouth and stopped himself from shouting.
"You're never going to change, are you? You're determined to stay locked up in here like a prisoner and waste away, aren't you?"
"As long as this world goes round and the sands of time pass through in storms, I'll always be here. I'll never leave and there's nothing you can do?—"
Before I could make my proclamation my body, my soul, even my mind, were yanked back, dragged into darkness. An abyss that swallowed me whole and when it spat me out it split me into two, only keeping the eternal part of me.
I opened my eyes gasping for air but even when I sat up and attempted to fill my lungs with oxygen, they still burned as if the air was toxic.
I was fighting for my life and then…
Then his gaze met mine and all was well with the world again. My mind, body and soul were at peace.
"Hi," he said and my heart skipped a beat.
"Hello," I answered, smiling at him. My beautiful husband. My soulmate. My godmate.
Was I dead? What on Duat had happened to me? I couldn't be. If I had, Ani would be standing before me ready to weigh my heart before he ushered me to whatever afterlife awaited me. But even then, my husband wouldn’t be waiting for me on the other side. If he did, I would have taken my life eons ago.
No, this was something else.
A dream, perhaps?
"My king," I tried to sit up, my fingers searching for him, needing him to find my touch so I could pull him onto me and taste him after millennia without him.
Instead of reaching out for me, he took a step back.
