❝death is only the beginning.❞
Mara El-Masri's fascination with the long-ago world of ancient Egypt started with the stories her stepfather would tell her when she was a child. Her brother Talib El-Masri is missing, left after their mother's funera...
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☾ ☽
"AND WHAT, PRAY TELL, TOOK YOU SO LONG?"
The question Mara was almost immediately greeted with when she opened the door to their bedroom wasn't an unexpected one, but made her smile nonetheless. As she closed the door behind her, making sure to lock it so that they weren't disturbed, Mara answered, "Your son wanted a story."
Jonathan was sitting in the chair in the corner, situated in a way that made her think he had been waiting for her in that exact spot since they parted ways twenty minutes ago (he to their bedroom, she to their son's). He hadn't changed, still wearing his dinner clothes like she was. He replied knowingly, "Hamunaptra?"
"He wanted to hear it, but I told him I wasn't going to tell him right before he went to sleep and not without you there," Mara said. Instead, he asked for the story of the universe's creation as it went in Egyptian mythology and she told it to him. He enjoyed it just the same. "We're going to have to figure out which parts of the story aren't appropriate for him to hear."
"You mean Rick nearly getting hanged?" Jonathan said as he stood from the chair, sitting instead on the edge of the bed as he watched her go to the dresser to take off her jewelry. "Or getting shot at multiple times, watching someone get eaten by scarabs?"
"Yes," Mara said after a pause, nodding shortly. Now that she thought about it, she wasn't entirely certain any part of it was appropriate for a ten year old boy to hear, but he did already know most of the story and he wanted to hear the rest of it. Some things were probably better left for when he was a teenager. "Do you think Sarah will be interested in hearing the whole story?"
"I don't know. I know she definitely had some questions, though. Thanks to Evy mentioning that Rick once punched me."
"Did you hope to keep that a secret for the rest of your life?"
"Maybe," he said. She turned around to face him, brows raised, and he added with a heavy, exasperated sigh as he recalled the events that led to that particular incident, "I picked his pocket when he was drunk, he ended up on death row for 'having a good time,' I brought you and Evy the Hamunaptra key, Evy berated me for stealing it from a drunk and you betrayed me by saying I was a bad liar."
"You were," she reminded him with a laugh. "The only reason Evy didn't realize you were lying when you said you found it in Thebes was because she was too focused on the key."
"Are you admitting you were more focused on me than the key?" he asked of her in a lowered, vaguely scandalous tone. She merely tilted her head at him, a loving look on her. His eyes lit up. "I adore that look on your face right now."
