In and out. Round and about. Ra's hair slid through the little girl's fingers like silk, fine and black like the funeral shroud Anubis wore during the dedications of new mines. She had seen three now, which was more than even someone as old as her mother must have seen. Her mother still thought the stars were specks of quartz in the sky, glittering in the light of this god before her.

The gathering of hair nearly slipped from her fingers and she gasped before she could stop herself, stilling her hands and closing her fingers around it before it could fall and slap to his back again, wet and unpleasant. The boy pharoah tilted his head, turning as if to look back at her, and she whispered a quick apology, sorting the strands out again and continuing her weave.

She had not pulled, and thank goodness, or there would have been a stinging slap instead.

He said something - 'hurry' she thought, though it was still slurred by his odd accent - and she tried to move her fingers faster. The other girls were better for this. They were older, and prettier, and their fingers were more graceful. Hers looked stubby, and she knew it.

Why did the pharoah want her to do this? Her hands shook as she took a silk band from the boy standing behind her and wrapped it tightly around the end of the braid, tying it hastily.

Mother said it was important to gain his favor and tell her what she saw. The pharoah said she would never see her mother again. It made her sad sometimes, but she could barely remember her mother now. She couldn't decide now whether her mother's command should still be obeyed. The pharoah knew best, didn't he? He was a god.

Carefully she rested the braid against his back and let the boy pull her away so the pharoah could rise. Face properly downcast, she tried to catch her companion's eyes while the slither of a velvet dressing gown and the clink of beads tried to bring her attention back to the pharoah. She obeyed their call, because it was wrong to ignore him, even if he wasn't paying attention himself.

She sensed him coming closer, and watched the glimmer of the gold beads on his sandals. It still fascinated her, how rich everything here was, when the home she remembered was always dusty and drab. She felt like that when he looked at her - dusty, drab, and beneath notice. He hadn't given her a name yet, because only those of exceptional beauty were given names, and the one she'd had from birth meant nothing here.

But he noticed her now. The startling chill of the gold wrappings on his fingers pressed into her chin as he bade her to look up. She obeyed, because one just didn't say no, and her neck craned almost all the way back just so she could look into his eyes. They were dark. In the bedchamber's dim light, they were so dark that light didn't even reflect from their surface. She tried not to bite her lip. He'd told her once that was an ugly thing to do, and she'd never done it again.

Was she in trouble? Had her mistake angered him? His face was smooth. It always was, and no one could ever tell what he was thinking - not until it was too late.

His eyebrows curved up and it seemed almost that he smiled, but he so rarely did it that she couldn't tell. the pharoah released her chin and turned away, and she tried not to breathe too quickly until he was at his bed and shedding the robe, too far away to hear. The sound of the pyramid ship drowned out little things like breathing, as long as one was far enough away.

She was still looking up. As soon as she realized it, she snapped her chin down again. She wanted to keep watching - that's what she'd been told to do, watch - but he disliked it when they watched him sleep, so she kept her head down and tried to imagine what he would think if she prayed to him that he never notice her again.


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Jaye Davidson is only 5'3" (1.6m) according to the IMDB. That's so short! Ha. I notice, reading this again, that I didn't pay any attention to what would surely be awesome beauty for a peasant in this canon, but... it didn't seem important. And once again, my interpretation of the word is rather obscure. Go figure.