In Love with a Jackal

4.

I said my hellos and sat down at my desk in the university office that I shared with the rest of the students on this Programm. A couple of people from the other fields were already here working, eventhough it was barely eight in the morning. I was usually never here before nine, but after last night I figured escapin- I mean, coming here early would not be such a bad idea. I'd only slept 2 hours anyway.

That is, if you considered staring at your bedroom wall with bloodshot eyes and a resting pulse of 300, sleep.

I'd snuck out of my apartment this morning after checking if the supernatural man-creature was still asleep in my guest room. It still baffled me that a supposed God would sleep at all, but heck, what did I know. He'd just lain there, snuggled in the duvet with his eyes closed, peacefully napping. When I'd tentatively poked him with my finger he hadn't even moved. I'd kind of expected him to do that thing I'd seen in a bunch of shows and movies, where their "elite battle instincts" kick in at the faintest sound and they hold a knife to your throat.
But no, the guy was out like a rock.

So then, after taping a note to the fridge saying where I'd be and when I'd come back, I'd simply left.

I'd hesitated a bit before stepping out the door for fear of dissappearing again, but to my joy it didn't end up happening. As he'd said, as long as my intention to return was there, I'd be fine. Still that didn't mean I believed everything he'd told me.

I mean how could I? I'd studied so many ancient myths and stories and one thing always rang true no matter what: when a god shows up the humans were about to get fucked. And according to greek mythology, sometimes even quite literally.

I turned the office computer on, typed in my credentials and waited for the system to log me in. Forget about what was on my schedule, there was only one thing I was going to do this morning and that was research.

I really only knew the basics about ancient egypt and that was the legitimate truth.

It was simply not my field; I could tell you more about a broken shard of a greecian pithos then the entirety of bronze age egypt. Last night I'd barely even been able to identify Anubis as the *God*.

And honestly, eventhough I studied Greco-roman antiquity, meaning an overlap with ancient egyptian history was inevitable, I had still tried to avoid the subject to the best of my abilities. It's not that I hated it or anything, but it was one of those things you just couldn't make yourself learn.

Personally I just had no interest in egyptology and just between us, I also thought it was kinda overdone.
I opened Google, typed "Anubis" into the search bar and clicked the very first page that came up. Quickly scanning through the text I confirmed the things I already knew: Anpu or Anubis was the ancient egyptian God of embalming, and death depending on the era. He had a truly warped family history and spent most of his time guiding souls into the afterlife. He had the head of a jackal, the body of a human and the charm of a rabid animal.

Nice.

I closed the tab, and decided to just skip to our department data bank instead; I needed proper information and I figured I should look up that statuette again too. As I once again waited for the computer to load, since like every other university everything here still ran on windows 7, my friend Youmna walked through the door. And oh, what a happy coincidence, she also happened to be an egyptology major.

"Youmna! What do you know about Anubis?" I shouted at her over the top on my screen.

She ignored me at first and greeted her department buddies instead. But after dumping her pastel blue leather backpack on her desk, she luckily did headover in my direction.

"You know Tina, other people say good morning." she said as she let herself fall into the chair next to me. In her white distressed jeans and dark green tailored blouse she looked great as always.

"I'll buy you lunch in the cantine tomorrow if you answer my question." I answered.

She sighed with fake enthusiasm, "Wow, free lunch in the cantine, how could I say no to that?"

"Easy, you can't."

Youma laughed and leaned a bit closer to me, "Well then, I know that Anubis likes when you put your organs in a jar and kill a goat in his honor." she chuckled again, "and that if upon death you are morally unclean, he yeets you out of existence."

At that we both laughed together, but internally I died a little.

"But like is he the happy kind of god?" I asked, trying to play it cool, "Is he like, a funny guy?"

Despite all the great new things I was learning about Anubis, I had yet to find any similarities to the guy I still had sleeping in my apartment.

"Funny guy?" Youmna scoffed, looking at me like I was crazy, "He feeds human hearts to the crocodile deity Ammit, what do you think?"

"I think I might have to buy a goat."

Youmna once again laughed heartily as I truly wondered if I should try and procure a goat from somewhere.

Before I could question her further about the sleeping habits of egyptian gods, someone called Youmna's name and she jumped out of the chair again.

Running after the rest of her colleagues who were already leaving the office, she turned one last time to point a finger at me and say,

"You owe me. "

And then she was out the door.

Alone again, I let myself fall back in my chair and stared at the picture still open on my screen. It was a statue of an onyx jackal with sharp pointy ears and golden lined eyes, labeled simply as 'Anubis shrine, 18th dynasty'. It was about as textbook as it got.

I unconsciously shook my head as I once again thought about that guy. He didn't resemble this Anubis at all, they were almost complete polar opposites. Unlike the Anubis from literature, the guy had not acted like the mysterious and powerful lord of death, but more like, you know, a magical Dave.

Trying to ignore my obvious doubt, I went back to scrolling through the databank. There had to be something in here that would help me. At least a little bit. But as skimmed article after article, I still couldn't shake the feeling that something was incredibly off.