Page 6 of Ra
Azi walked away from the likeness she was comparing, and considered another. Finally she wandered over to the throne, determined to look there where he was pictured with all the rest of the gods. When she got close enough, her mouth fell open and her hand shot out to trace the place Ra’s image had been carved on the relief before. She quickly looked over her shoulder at the man standing across the room, claiming to be Ra, then at the faded, almost empty place on the wall once more. “Shit, shit, shit! What did you do? Why is Ra not on the relief anymore?!”
“I am here, silly female. How would I be on the wall if I am here instead?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Yet, my image among the rest is clearly muted, and here I stand,” he said, condescendingly, his words accented with perfectly timed impatient blinks of his impossibly long eyelashes.
“No, no, no, no,” she rushed out, as she ran to the next wall and the next, examining all the likenesses of Ra that she could find. The man in front of her couldn’t appear any more like the images of Ra if she’d hired him to do so.
“This is impossible,” she muttered.
“And yet it’s not,” he said, feeling vindicated.
Finally she hung her head in defeat and slowly turned to face him. “How did this happen? Why are you here?”
“You summoned me! I am here to be revered! To take my place as god of all the lands!” he exclaimed. His voice returned to what she thought might be a semi-normal tone for him as he finally looked her in the eye. “I am here because of you. I want to live again.”
Chapter 2
“This is bad. This is so bad,” she whispered, rushing back to the wall behind the throne to try to pry her scarab from it again. After several failed attempts she finally dug into her fanny-pack and took out a small pocket knife to try to remove the scarab from its place in what had been Ra’s palm. “Oh, come on!” she half-screamed in frustration.
“Do not damage my temple!” he said conversationally.
“Just… stay quiet while I try to figure this out! This cannot be happening. It’s got to be a hoax,” she snapped as she continued to try to pry at the scarab from different angles. She felt warm breath on her neck and glanced over her shoulder, quickly jumping away from the scarab and pressing herself against the wall when she found him looming over her.
“You do not tell a god to remain quiet,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“You’re not a god. You’re just a human with a delusion.”
He smiled at her and gestured to where his likeness once was a part of the relief. “I am Ra. We’ve already established that,” he said, grinning a self-satisfied smile at her as he raised his chin and looked down his regal nose at her.
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible when you are the god of all creation.” He looked down at his hands and waggled his fingers before shaking out his hands at his sides. “Most things, anyway. Once I’ve been alive for a while again, I’m sure all my powers will return.”
“Okay. Let’s just pretend you are Ra. How do you speak English? Why don’t you speak ancient Egyptian?”
“Watching from the walls of this temple for as long as I have, it was easily learned. Besides, I am a god. I’m able to speak any language I choose. The one I’m speaking is the one I’ve most heard recently. What did you call it? English? What is English? Who rules the country of English?”
“It’s the national language of America, and is quite commonly spoken and understood in most of Europe as well. And why are you pretending you don’t know what English is?!” she shouted. “Stop pretending to be something you’re not!” she insisted as she slipped out from between him and the wall.
His smug grin slowly shifted to an expression of irritation as he slowly followed her, the words of his native language — ancient Egyptian — using accents not heard in more than a thousand years falling from his lips, made his words unfamiliar, yet familiar enough for her to grasp his basic meaning.
She held her ground and simply watched him approach, dumbfounded as she began to realize that somehow, in some unintentional way, she’d called Ra into the 21st century.
“Why do you not speak back now, female?!”
“Can you use any power you had before?”
He gestured a few times, pointed a few more, lifted his hands toward the ceiling again seeming very confused when those gestures produced no results at all. “I cannot! I do not understand! And I hurt!” he said, whining the last bit a little as he placed a hand over his bladder.
“You hurt?”
“Yes! It is very uncomfortable.”
“Oh, crap. I brought Ra back, and now he’s going to die because he’s human and I don’t know what to do with him,” she mumbled as she headed toward the stairs. “Just go back in the wall. The scarab is still there, you should be able to return. That’s the only answer. Go! Go!” she said, shooing him toward the reliefof all the gods behind the throne where his likeness once was standing amongst the images of the others.
“Hold, female! You did not ask to leave my presence. I will not be returning to the wall!”
