𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞.🌙 𝐊𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐮

𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞.

"I can hear the sound of your barely beating heart

Pieces on the ground from the world that fell apart

Just hold on

It won't be long..."

A weakened heart.

The way it skipped over beats, impromptu. Its rhythm lacked the usual thrum that a strong pulse would retain.

Khonshu had not had the pleasure of hearing one in such intimate proximity for decades, yet his memory would never fail him. The old bird remembered every encounter, every being and their usual ignorance. Their demands or delight for his presence. He could sense life pound through a body like crashing waves. He only chose the strongest to enter his service and only the mightiest would seek his secluded temple.

The visitor before him stumbled into his temple in the early hours, under the blanket of his stars he hung in the sky. A safe cover for any that wished to travel. His usual peace and endless wait for pilgrims broke with the pulse, silent to her perhaps but for him it echoed, bounced from the walls like symphonies.

Khonshu had not beheld a visitor in many, many nights. Perhaps the agony of waiting for the possibility of a soul to witness him again made the rhythm all the more alluring. Yet he recalled the countless thrums, each unique to a being. Hers he'd never sensed anything like.

All Gods could sense potential in the heart. It was more than a vital component to endurance in life. It was like a scroll, a testament to a person's soul that would determine their fate in the great after.

Khonshu usually dealt with the lowest, the cruellest and most despicable of mankind. Ones whose hearts would earn them eternal imprisonment in the sands of the Duat. In stark contrast, he beheld one so... free of sin. Without a touch of a dark thought. Such purity, it was alien to him, yet a fascinating type of encounter.

Khonshu sensed her heart and its weakness. In a way it was contradictory. For a being to have a heart swelled with light and love, yet to be failed by its own sickly tendency.

The woman found herself leaning against an ancient altar in need of support. The ragged breaths she drew in more urgently spurred his desire to draw closer. Her perplexment only heightened her physical weakness.

For one who delighted in the torment of the weak, to see something so small, purely innocent in distress, it pained him in unfamiliar despair.

"Your heart, it does not function as it should." The old God's voice whispered on the cool desert wind across the stone walls, brushing over the delicate form. Her head rose in urgency and peered around to locate the company. He did not yet make himself visible. From consciousness alone he observed her. Felt the purity of the organ flutter in her chest and fail to catch crucial beats.

The temple walls still stood mighty after almost two millennia, the breeze that swirled and embraced her with chilled, medicinal touch was wholly his doing. An attempt to ease her breaths. She inhaled the air in a deep gasp, the hit on her pasty skin earning a shudder of sheer relief. The rhythm eased, if only for a few moments.

The satisfaction it brought Khonshu to feel and see her momentarily at ease... was a new experience indeed.

"Fascinating..." The voice commented once again curiously, perking the attention of the young female under his roof. All were young in the eyes of the Gods. He perceived this woman as fully grown and out of adolescence, yet naivety and lack of worldly experience emitted like her an aura. She was a child to him.