❝death is only the beginning.❞
Mara El-Masri's fascination with the long-ago world of ancient Egypt started with the stories her stepfather would tell her when she was a child. Her brother Talib El-Masri is missing, left after their mother's funera...
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☾ ☽
TALIB HISSED IN PAIN, throwing a glare toward Ardeth as the chieftain tried to extract the bullet that was buried in his shoulder. Mara's first-aid kit was open on the table and being used to help Talib, though it seemed his inability to sit still was harming him more than the actual bullet. He said to him, "You have the exact opposite of a gentle touch, Medjai."
"There is a bullet in your shoulder," Ardeth stated calmly without a glance to him. He was entirely focused on his work. "It would be painful regardless of who took it out."
Jamil continued to pace across the flat as he had been since they returned. "If it was the shooter from yesterday," he murmured to them, "Qadir must have sent him out again. Somehow he found you three," here he paused his pacing and looked at Talib, Mara, and Jonathan, "and was following you back here."
"He only shot after we noticed him," Talib told.
Mara had been silent all this time. She hadn't said a word since they had arrived back about fifteen minutes prior and stood to the side now with her journal still in her hands. There was still blood on her hands. Not all of it was Talib's. The scrapes on her palms weren't much and had been far from her mind the moment she realized Talib had been shot. They were hardly noticed by her.
The same could not be said for Jonathan. He stood at the opposite end of the table as she, his bloody jacket on the back of Talib's chair. He had been watching her, and realized about the scrapes when she moved her hand. He walked around the table to her, passing by a still-pacing Jamil, took her hand to look at the injury, and said, "Mara, you're bleeding."
His observation succeeded in grabbing the attention of the others. Jamil stopped pacing and both Talib and Ardeth turned to look at Mara, who glanced at her hand and said, shaking her head, "It's just a scrape. I'm fine."
"You wouldn't let any of us get away with that."
Jonathan was more than correct there. If it were any of them with a scrape on their hands, regardless of its severity, she would insist on working on it. So Mara sat down in the nearest chair as Jonathan pulled another one over. He positioned that chair directly across from hers and reached for some gauze and the bottle of isopropyl alcohol, like he'd seen her do so many times (many of those for an injury on him).
The next minute in the flat was rather silent. Ardeth found the bullet and managed to take it out, and then got to work stitching up the wound. Meanwhile Mara watched as Jonathan, with all the care and attention and gentleness she'd shown him when their places were reversed, bandaged her hands. It was the first time she had been the one being patched up.
