HalfWorlder #Wattys2017

Chapter 21-We have sandwiches at Seshat's Place

I never thought I'd see the great sphinx covered in snow, but I never thought someone would tell me I was an alien either. A lot could change in a few weeks.

As we flew over Giza, we swung low to check out the big cat. Ice crystals grew between his toes as he stretched upon the frozen sand. I caught something else gleaming in the light while we flew by, but we were going too fast to find out what it was. If it wasn't for the troops standing guard over him like so many frozen popsicles, children might be playing on him – or from the appearance of the nearby city – terrorists might be destroying him. It was a coin toss today.

It was like that in so many of the big cities we flew over on our way north to Alexandria. Different religious groups blamed each other for the chaos the world had fallen into, and the result was catastrophic. A Christian temple sat smoldering in Minya. A Muslim mosque burned with bright orange flames near Cairo, unquenched even by the heavy and wet falling snow.

There was chaos in the air too; the heavens as angry as the people milling beneath. From almost the moment we rose from the underground tunnel, the wind held the solar barque in a stomach-twisting embrace, like two lovers caught in a tragic quarrel. The wind, however, was not without its moments of tenderness. For the time being, we floated through calm skies. The reprieve was welcome. Everyone but Amisi took the chance to stand and stretch or lean out to see what was happening below.

"Look at that," Wep yelled out as the clouds parted. He hung precariously out over open air, holding on with an arm and a leg wrapped around the mast of his broken wind sail. He was like a sun-bronzed pirate of the air, the mast bent beneath him at an awkward angle after the last burst of turbulence we went through. It's only use now was that of unstable lookout.

The man was crazy. Or maybe some kind of heroic bad boy daredevil by the way Alexandra was always watched him?

Little currents of air ruffled his hair and his eyes flashed with the risk he took. "Have you ever seen anything like it?" he asked in that breathy way he had. I ignored his Titanic moment, though Alexandra couldn't by the way she watched him. She leaned back on her elbows against the opposite rail staring. I took her in with my eyes while she watched another, and then turned to check out what Wep was actually talking about. A line of cars stretched as far as the eye could see up the Desert Highway. The line ran from the fire-riddled and sprawling capital city of Cairo to the port city of Alexandria on the coast.

We weren't the only ones seeking refuge there tonight.

Alexandra walked over and stood beside me. Her eyes briefly rested on me, then fell toward the highway, taking in the snake of cars below. You could sense their fear and their hope as they travelled that road. It heaped responsibility on my head. Their hope wasn't at the end of that road though. It flew along with them above their heads. They just didn't know it. I wondered if Alexandra felt as burdened as I? We were responsible for the fate of this planet.

"There must be thousands of cars on the road."

She only nodded, lost in her own thoughts.

"I can hear them honking," Amisi squeaked from her seat. Her voice sounded small, because her head was wedged firmly between her legs. It was the best she could do without a paper bag to blow into. "Oh, I can hear them honking." This time, she put her fingers in her ears to tune them out and started rocking.

Ryan went to sit beside her.

Alexandra's eyes rested on Amisi now. "All this must be so terrifying for them." She caught my eyes and went silent again.

"I can't imagine what they're thinking. The fabric of our world is going crazy and they don't understand why."

It was hard for me to forget what was at the end of all this if we couldn't find a way into Isis' bunker in Palenque. Terrifying, yes. Most definitely. The potential for total annihilation does that to a person.