Donkeys and Demigods
Daphne
“R
eally, Emrys?” Camille asked, patting away flies with her hand. “Out of all possible methods of transportation?”
I stroked the long ears of my donkey. They were white and soft like velvet. The animal was calm and surprisingly fast. The city’s chaos faded behind us and ahead stood the massive outlines of the pyramids.
Emrys shrugged. “It’s less conspicuous than flying. And taking the Dusk Roads is a risk, as you don’t know what who’d we run into there.”
“I find it deeply humbling,” Orren said, his feet dragging in the dirt and stirring up dust. He was too tall for his animal.
Before he climbed into the saddle, he had whispered words in the ear of his donkey, and the animal strutted proudly, its head held high.
“The three most powerful immortals who once walked with gods ride donkeys to their last battle.”
The sun was setting, and the purple night bled into the desert.
Even veiled in heat and dust, the pyramids were impossible to look away from—colossal geometries carved from the bones of the world.
In the last rays of the setting sun, the limestone casing stones at the top of Khufu’s pyramid gleamed, a remnant of its once dazzling white mantle.
The rest was a sun-scorched skeleton, worn by time, stripped bare by centuries of looters and wind.
Below, at the edge of the plateau, wooden scaffolding and tents flapped in the dry wind. Archeologists in crumpled linen leaned over journals. Porters dozed beside crates. Camels snorted in the lengthening shadows.
The Great Sphinx, half-buried in sand, loomed ahead of us—its lion’s body coiled in eternal vigil. Its eyes, though eroded, still watched.
Maerya stood at its massive stone paws, listening to something. The ochre of her robes blended with the dunes, save for the flicker of copper charms and bone jewelry that caught the dying light. Her braids lifted in the wind.
“Well,” Camille said, squinting beneath her silk parasol, “she certainly knows how to make an impression.”
Orren patted his donkey. “I’m surprised she didn’t arrive riding a sandstorm,” he said.
Maerya didn’t wave. She didn’t smile. She simply turned and vanished between the stone paws of the Sphinx, her silhouette swallowed by the opening of a forgotten entrance.
Emrys dismounted first.
Orren squeezed Camille’s hand without saying a word. Emrys looked back at me, the desert wind tugging at his shirt. “Stay close,” he said. I didn’t trust my voice enough to reply.
The air felt thicker now, charged with something ancient and watching. The silence that settled just before the pages of history turned.