Beauty and the Pharaoh

Chapter 23 - [Beauty and the Shiver]

As promised, the next day Atem and I got ready to go to my universities library as soon as we woke up.

     Despite the (in my opinion) severity of what happened last night between the birthday boy and I, he acted like nothing had changed.

     But I wasn't going to have it.

     I grabbed his hand as we walked towards the library, making him look at me.

     "What are you doing?" He asked as he tried to pull his hand away.

     "You're my boyfriend now," I said, "so you have to hold my hand."

     Atem raised an eyebrow, "what?"

     I tightened my grip on his hand, though he seemed to refuse to hold mine. "You're my boyfriend," I repeated, "so act like one."

     "And what exactly is a boyfriend supposed to do?"

     "Hold my hand, for one."

     He rolled his eyes. "That's ridiculous."

     "That's the rules of my land!" I argued.

     "What kind of pathetic rules are those? You are not my mother. What is the need of holding hands?"

     I scoffed, "what's that supposed to mean? You are such a dope!"

     And though he still refused to hold my hand, I kept a tight hold of his.

     As pretty much always, we argued for most of the walk until we actually got to the library. Because once we got to the library, he was too amazed just by looking at it from the outside to continue arguing with me.

     It was, after all, massive.

     I was quite familiar with this library, since I've seen it like, a bazillion times already. And to be honest, I'm sure he's seen it before too. You could see it from the balcony of my apartment.

     But anyhoo, I guided him to the elevator and took him straight up to the ninth floor. When the elevator opened, Atem was almost speechless.

     I mean, I couldn't blame him. I was practically speechless when I first saw this place too. And I've seen modern day libraries before.

     He hasn't.

     I had to pull him out of the elevator before the doors closed, especially since there were people who were waiting to go up to a higher floor.

     But then I set him free.

     He spent a long time exploring, unable to believe that there were fifteen floors of this many books. Of course, since this was the Ancient Egypt floor, he enjoyed it even more.

     This floor had a ton of books, but not just your average everyday books. Yeah, it had the journals and the history books and all those great books written by European men during the nineteen hundreds.

     But it also had these massive books filled with massive photographs of the walls on Ancient Egyptian architecture. Of course, they weren't just plain walls! These walls had beautiful carvings and paints and all sorts of stuff.

     There were also other books which had copies of other various primary documents from things as insignificant as a list that was once painted onto a broken pot piece, to something as fantabulous as an Ancient Egyptian Kings letter to his son on how to be a good Pharaoh.

     It was literally because of this floor of this library that both Aunty Maya and Uncle Ethan chose to do their undergraduate degree, graduate degree and PhD at Oakville University.