The Western Queen, Stone Skin #2, #85k90

The Changing Moon

1700 BCE

Full moon...

Obion watched Khonsu-et talking to the acolytes about how the moon god Khonsu taught about 'opening the mouth' which was a ritual of opening the senses of the living and the dead. He was telling the offspring of humans and wolves about how important it was for temple priests and priestesses to use all their senses in life and in death.

Near the middle of the night, many of the children began dozing off. They laid on their mats under the painted ceiling as Khonsu-et told them the stories of the constellations and sang their songs softly. Obion stood watch above the temple listening to the sounds below as one by one the children fell asleep.

Under the full moon, he flew out over the irrigated landscape toward the river, patrolling their territory from the sky. In the bright darkness, he saw a rabbit scurry away from the edge of the water. A moment later, his winged beast caught the tiny morsel in his claws as a gift for his wolf. Turning he flew back towards the temple, and landed on the tower. He leapt down and went into their chambers lifting the lid off the cooling basin in their small kitchen. Lifting out a cooled vessel of bouza, he poured a cup for Khonsu-et, then he skinned the rabbit with his talon-like claws. Obion found his lover standing before the gate of the temple looking toward the city.

"Come and eat," Obion insisted.

Grinning at him, Khonsu-et climbed up the handholds in the pillar at the gate. Obion spread his wings and flew up beside him. They sat in silence and moonlight, staring over the walls at the row houses set side by side, on two sides of the perimeter of the protection barrier. Oil lamps flickered in random windows of the market street on the opposite walls from the homes, but no one stirred. The chorus of frogs and nightbirds was only occasionally interrupted by the growling belch of a crocodile or distant bellow of a hippo.

"Have you ever experienced a more perfect night?" Khonsu-et asked as he wiped his bloody hands after consuming the rabbit.

Obion shook his head as he wrapped his arm and wing around the wolf. "Not in all the memories of my ancestors."

Together they watched the hippo constellation followed the stars of the crane toward the land of the dead. In the distance on the opposite side of the town, at the temple of the wolf deva, Obion noticed someone standing on the roof in the shadow of a pillar. Priestess Oracle Iddoferu was watching them with her hand resting on her prominent pregnant belly. Obion's sensitive eyes could see the tears running down her cheeks then she raised her hand and made a gesture of thanks, before she turned and went inside.

"Your mate envies us," Obion observed.

"You are my mate," Khonsu-et insisted then turned to look south. Obion followed his gaze, but saw no threat in the river or across the desert beyond the great river delta.

Two hours before dawn, Obion flapped his wings lazily as he followed the caravan of donkeys down to the deep part of the river to collect the water for the town. He flew his patrol around the borders of the territory of the two temples of Lycopolis. He sensed his lover's unspoken concern and shared it. Both worried the late Queen's followers would seek revenge on the temple town for her death at the hands of one of the wolf's sons, but beyond the normal movements of daily life in the upper Kingdom, there was no threat he could discern.

Returning to the temple of the moon, Obion landed in a Doum date orchard and gathered several ripe bundles of the fruit for the children to have for breakfast. His sensitive ears picked out a buzzing among the leaves of one tree. He felt the vibration of the bark to discover a beehive. He decided to let them alone for now and return in the future to collect honey as a gift for his beloved. Leaping skyward he raced the dawn. Many children were just waking, when his wings stirred the dust of the courtyard.