Who is luckier than he in this world? He, who’s soul had been allowed to come back? He who had been spat back upon ground that he was no longer meant to walk upon? He who was here now looking upon faces he was meant to miss forevermore? And although there was no way for him to know how long he had been gone, there was no haze of time lost. His memories were vivid and eagerness clamored where confusion would have been in a lesser beast. Although the years had a bleached his first-bones clean and white, he was back like he had never known time’s touch. Now a vital, impressive stallion stood where a shapeless, starving shell of a soul had just resided. His eyes were lucid and wide with triumph as he opens them to the voices of his family, Yael as ageless as sin and Etro – as beautiful as she should be but no longer the boisterous child-princess he remembered. “My girls,” he says, and although his voice is as heavy and commanding as it had always been, there is a stumble of emotion in it. He reaches out to embrace them but another voice comes, echoing through his thoughts and beating in his wide chest. The voice is achingly soft yet gilded with power – she calls his name, their names, and then the world is black again.
The smell of jasmine and musky incense explode in his nose as he wakes beside the still sleeping, olive-skinned girl. His human heart shifts with recognition and a smile slips across his hard-jawed face, even in this form she is hauntingly, exotically beautiful. Her hair is clipped back with an emerald scarab and her petite curves adorned in milk-white silk, she is delicate and fine where he is rough and feral. His skin is darker than hers, with hair as pitch as night plaited down his bare, tattooed back. His heart is beating so hard he thought it might burst as he reaches out to gather her in heavy, needy arms, “Yael,” he breathes into her fragranced black hair, his voice gruff and thick with accent. The fingers that cradle her petal-smooth face are calloused and tattooed, but they touch her softly, carefully and her breath quicken as he does. Her eyes open slowly and she is gazing back up at him with her placid, ever-calm eyes. Such a calmness, he had always mused and teased, only comes with the recognition of your own power. She was his thorned-rose.
She answers him with a brush of her lips across his and he is pulling her closer into him, a fistful of her raven hair clenched between his fingers. “That’s enough!” Osiris bellows, stepping from the shadows with Isis close at her heels, squealing delightfully, “Oh stop it!” She says, slapping the back of her brother’s back playfully, “let them, I’ll watch.” The goddess says with a laugh, dropping down at the foot of the ivory chaise that the two forever-lovers lay upon.
“We are here on business, wife!” Osiris says, more impatiently this time and his voice shakes the marble hall. His blood-gold throne that appears beneath him as he sits, stroking his beard as Isis gathered herself to his side, muttering something impishly beneath her breath.
“You,” Osiris points at Vanquish, who is suddenly standing before the two gods as Yael watches from her own seat of ivory and furs, “have been brought back to rule this kingdom again, but you must do it alone.” The god’s gaze travel’s back to where Yael sits, “she has given you back your gift of life,” he says, “but in that same breadth of love, you rely far too much upon her and her strength.”
“So this,” Osiris says, and they are back in the Deserts once more, his bare feet burning on the hot sand, “is on your shoulders and yours alone.” Isis comes next, handing him a pomegranate that smells of smoke and metal, “take a bite, you’ll like it.” His hand brings the fruit to his lips without hesitation, sparkling white teeth delving into it’s flesh as a trickle of juice dribbled down his chin. The goddess leans in, lustfully close as if she meant to lick the nectar away – but then she catches Yael’s eye and only disappears into nothingness, leaving only a laugh and the scent of jasmine.
Osiris smirks with a shake of his adorned head and winks to Yael, “see you around,” he says, as if they were old friends, “and Morphine sends her regards.” Then he too is gone, leaving only memory and the scent of musky incense behind.
With the gods gone they are returned to their natural forms – he, a dragonwinged giant and she, a lithe shimmer of gold wrapping around raw power. He would sit upon the Deserts throne again and he would wear its crown with all its vices and glories.
So once again the Nightwalker stood upon the sands of his Deserts, Camrynn’s word’s throbbing through his ears as he looked out upon the palms and dunes – “Vanquish, the Deserts are yours,” she had said, “I think, perhaps, it has always been,” perhaps.
Hi guys, missed yall. We love you Evie
Yael used with permission and so on and so forth
