CHAPTER EIGHT
HUMAN
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Eventually, Mina lost track.
When he’d asked Anubis early on why no one had found them yet, the god replied simply, “Because I have not allowed them to.”
“But won’t other people come searching for me? My parents?”
Occasionally, Mina would remember his parents with a pang of sadness. Torn between this strange new life and the one he’d left. The one that was beginning to feel more and more like a dream.
The god had looked at Mina, seeming to decide between leaving his explanation at that or saying more. He eventually went on.
“Gods have many useful abilities. One of which is to manipulate time. You and I are in a liminal space where time moves differently. Where we can experience more. Where your soul is free to explore. From your friends’ perspective and the rest of the world, it is possible that only a few hours have passed. ”
“How long can this go on?”
“For as long as I wish.” The god shifted, looked away. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you wish to leave now?”
“No.” Mina had stepped closer, pressing a hand to the god’s chest, hooking a finger around the chain that held a golden scarab. “No, I don’t.”
Every once in a while, that forbidden feeling came back to punch Mina in the stomach. And each time he told it, no. He fought it back with words like impulsive and childish and lust. But Anubis and Mina’s time together had become about so much more than that.
After the experience on the mummification table, Anubis had carefully unwrapped Mina’s limp and shivering body and carried him outside into the warm Egyptian sun. Brought him to the river and cradled him under the current as the brown water washed him clean.
And it was then, outside of the temple, with the afternoon sun dusting his black fur like gold, that the reality of the moment hit Mina.
Looking up at Anubis, held tight in the god’s arms in the cool flow of the Nile, he realized Anubis was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and that maybe this really was the answer to his prayers.
The shine of the gold and gem-studded jewelry punched through his long, pointed ears and the glittering chains around his neck.
The long, strong line of his jaw. Despite all of the inhuman physical things about him, there was something so indescribably human in the quirk of his mouth when Mina said something cheeky.
The shine of his eyes that always seemed to search for Mina’s.
The way this unfathomably powerful creature cared so softly and tenderly for him.
After that, trips to the river had become a daily ritual. Walking the sun-drenched bank, swimming in the cool water. Anubis showed Mina how to set basket traps for catching perch, tilapia, and mullet. How to salt and dry them in the sun so that they would last longer in the damp temple.
But mostly, their days were spent indoors.
Mina learned that the half-finished murals on the walls were Anubis’s.
And so he watched with dizzying swells of admiration as the god painted scene after scene.
Eventually, he noticed that Anubis had started painting a new figure into his scenes.
A pale-skinned human with golden curls in a white shendyt next to his own hulking form.
Walking. Fishing. Swimming. And in each scene, Anubis’s figure was connected in some small way to his.
A finger on his shoulder, a palm on his head, a foot subtly resting on Mina’s as they stood side by side.
Mina found that part interesting since, apart from their few sexual encounters, Anubis didn’t go out of his way to touch Mina.
It had only recently started to bother him, and more and more lately, he’d considered asking Anubis about it.
Still, the scenes filled Mina’s heart. A few times, he had to stop himself from humming a song to himself while he watched Anubis work.
He trusted Anubis not to judge him, but there was something deep down that tugged at his voice whenever it tried to come out.
So he kept it hidden. Deep. Next to that forbidden feeling.
Mina stood now warming himself by the emerald fire in their bedroom. “A symbol of transformation and an image of the afterlife,” Anubis had said one day when Mina had asked about it, a distant longing in the god’s eyes. “Fields of Malachite.”
There was still so much he didn’t know about Anubis.
Some vastness within him that was always out of reach.
Whenever he would try to ask about his past or their future, the god would become quiet.
Or change the subject. Or lower his eyes and drop his shendyt.
Mina could never help but go along with the distraction.
Mina walked toward the red velvet couch that Anubis had brought before the fireplace weeks earlier. He threw himself along the length of it, turning to his back and lifting his arms to cradle his head in his hands. He thought about how he wanted to get closer to Anubis. To know more. To feel more.
The warm, forbidden feeling pressed against his stomach, and Mina closed his eyes, trying to will it away. Eventually, sensing that he was no longer alone with his thoughts, Mina looked up to see Anubis looking down at him.
“What are you thinking, son of man?”
“Seems like a silly question for you to be asking. Can’t you dig around in here and see for yourself?” Mina drummed his fingers against the side of his head.
“Now is not a moment of teaching. It would be unfair of me to go where I am not welcome in your body.”
Mina relaxed the worried part of his mind. Thank god. “I was thinking that I want to touch you.”
“You have touched very much of me,” the god said with a flick of his ear, an adorable little expression Mina had come to recognize as amusement.
“Not like that.” Up until that point, everything they had done together had been about Mina’s pleasure.
The focus on driving every ounce of ecstasy from his body as possible.
They hadn’t had proper sex. Mina wasn’t even sure if that was something he would physically be able to do.
It had only been oral, guided self-pleasure, and more episodes with the flail than Mina cared to admit. And yet he craved more.
“I want to really touch you. Your face. Your absurdly hunky chest. I want to run my hands up your thighs and make you feel good. But more than any of that…” Mina sat up, rising to his knees in the center of the sofa.
He hesitated. Even to admit this to himself was edging dangerously close to that secret feeling, but it bubbled to the surface, out of his control.
“More than any of that, I want to kiss you.”
The god looked away. “That would serve no purpose. This time is for you to learn. And to heal. I do not matter. Only you matter in this.”
“I’ve been here for probably a month now, Anubis. But it’s felt like a lifetime to me. You’ve given me every possible pleasure. Why would you deny me this one?” Mina felt a small twinge of guilt at turning the god’s own words back on him.
“I deny you nothing that I feel will aid you on your journey.”
“This will.”
“It won’t.”
Mina stood up from the sofa and walked toward Anubis. The green firelight flickered across his jet black skin, a dusting of emeralds across velvet fur.
“And if I insisted,” Mina said, standing inches from Anubis, the top of his head coming only to the god’s chest so that he had to look sharply up. Mina scrunched his nose and furrowed his brow, trying to be as irresistibly adorable as he could manage.
The god looked down, unmoved. “I would insist back.”
“And if I did this…” Mina raised his hand and pressed it lightly to Anubis’s chest. He could have sworn he felt the god’s breath hitch.
“I would ask that you only pursue those things which help you discover yourself. I am of no consequence.”
“You are to me.”
“To what end?”
“To whatever end.”
This time, Mina was certain he felt the breath beneath the god’s massive chest quicken.
“Sit with me,” Mina said. “Please.” Without waiting for a response, Mina lowered his hand and threaded his fingers through Anubis's, pulling them toward the sofa. He sat in the middle, facing one end, and pulled Anubis down with him. The god’s hulking frame barely fit on the couch, and Mina thought he heard it crack and chuckled to himself.
“What is humorous?” Anubis asked, his head cocked like a curious dog.
“Well, first, when you do that with your head, it’s fucking adorable. And second, you’re enormous and you look like a giant trying to sit on doll furniture.”
“These items were made for mortals. Gods have no need of furniture. I am content to go back to the mummification table if you wish to be close again.”
“No. I mean, yes, let’s definitely do that again, but not yet. Wait. If you don’t need furniture, why do you have a bed with blankets in here?
The god shifted, his eyes darting briefly to the fire. “After your first…lesson. The day that you arrived. You were in discomfort. Distraught. Still very wounded. It pained me to see it. I brought in a bed for you.”
Mina reached across the small distance between them and pressed his hand to Anubis's knee. “How long have you lived down here alone?”
Anubis hesitated. “I have not always been alone. In the ancient days, there were kings and queens amongst whom the gods lived. We were worshipped. We shepherded and provided for the mortals of this land and lands far beyond. But eventually, other gods took our place. Some true, others false. Soon, the false gods became more numerous than the true, and so we faded into obscurity and myth. Though we persist, I am one of few who remain in the mortal world.”
Mina couldn’t hide the surprise pushing his eyebrows up into his shaggy hair. So, all of the ancient Egyptian folklore was true? Osiris, the underworld, all of it?
“Why do you stay here if there’s no one left to believe in you?