"Though I am no longer alone," To this, the priestess had replied with a solemn nod, then a smile—one drowned in the darkness of her lips.

Indeed, she was no longer alone. But had she ever truly been, since the hour of her birth?
Asra observed her, her face still curled in that sly, knowing smile, her milky eye lingering over every detail the young lady had to offer. She seemed well-bred, perhaps even nobly born; there was in her a native grace, an effortless hauteur that shone in her gaze and led Asra to such a conclusion. Was she one of those born beneath the watchful eye of Râ, blazing like a thousand suns among mere mortals?

Asra. There is only this name I carry with me. And that low, mocking laugh she carried with her wherever she went.

The desert forewarned me. Heka sowed the seeds of your arrival, she confessed, entranced, her mouth parted in a wide, rapturous smile, enraptured to have at last found what the gods had fated her to seek. And now, here you stand, she added, with a chuckle rising from the depths of her chest.

What are you called? Who now stood before her? Had they, at last, brought to Asra what she had yearned for through all those endless years, her gods? ...