The dirt is hot, the air even hotter. Occasionally there’s a pathetic little puff of lukewarm breeze that feels chilled against your skin and when you wipe at your face the salt stings. You have been out here for hours; the digsite officially opens at seven am but you get here as early as possible to go through the plans again and again, checking over measurements and dig depths and going over whatever was unearthed the day before. It’s a slow dig, as most of them are, but you’ve been here for four weeks and all you have found is some terracotta shards and a ring that Chisisi insists hails from Khafre’s rule but that you secretly think cannot be more than fifty years old.
If you don’t find something within the next week you will have to shut it down. Even the prospect, as realistic as it may be, is sickening. A dud-dig means a reduction in funds from the university and the charity and that means no more trips to Egypt to spend your time studying the chemical composition of bones and fossilised faecal residue.
“Hello? Professor! I have someone here for you.”
The sharp bark startles you and you could hit Chisisi, really, you could. The trowel goes down and you spin around, one hand over your eyes and your mouth opened wide.
“What the hell do you–”
There is a woman with Chisisi. She’s got beautifully curly hair, a face full of freckles and muscles that shimmer with sweat and she’s smiling. At you. You don’t say anything, just stare into her dark eyes and that smile starts to grow.
“Hello.”
“Hi,” you gasp. She laughs, clear and cool, revealing shiny white teeth.
“This is Miss Layla El-Faouly. She is here to join the dig,” Chisisi says and looks very proud of himself. You suddenly feel very sorry for her and wonder if you are going to get a complaint about uncomfortable working conditions.
Despite your worries about Chisisi’s poor pick up lines, Layla doesn’t even seem to notice and just nods as her smile curves into something soft. “My father said you were having a little bit of trouble and thought that I might be able to lend a hand.”
You stare blankly at her, not really knowing what to say because you don’t work with anyone old enough to have a grown up daughter and then it clicks. “Oh! Oh my gods, I’m so sorry! Yes, yes, please join us. I haven’t met Abdulluh but if he’s anything as good as my boss makes him out to be then you are absolutely welcome.” You offer her your hand before realising that you are still in the pit and you are absolutely filthy. “Oh, shit–”
She grabs it with cool fingers and heaves, (those muscles you can’t stop staring at flex and it sends your stomach fluttering) then you’re launching out of the pit and straight into her chest. The force of you nearly takes her out but Layla adjusts and her arms spin you around, tightly clutched around your waist so that you end in a sort of dip with Layla’s face above yours, her eyes twinkling.
“Are you alright?” She asks and sounds amused. You don’t think it’s very amusing. Actually, the whole thing makes you want to die a bit.
“Yes!” You squeak out. She laughs and you wonder if you haven’t died already. “Sorry. Wasn’t expecting the change in altitude.”
“It’s not a problem.” Her voice curls around the words so perfectly it sounds like humming. “You looked like you needed some help.”
“Always,” Chisisi says dramatically and this time you do hit him, a quick snap of your palm against the back of his head. He grabs at it and spits something at you that you’re too busy looking at Layla to hear but from the grin on her face you know it’s likely a fireable offence.
“So,” Layla starts and looks around at the site with an assessing gaze. “Where do we start?”
You show her your findings with the sort of disappointment that used to be entirely reserved for presenting your parents with any kind of academic report and try not to flinch when she nods and hums at your words. It's wonderful to talk to her, though. She understands your messy cataloguing system immediately and decodes your shorthand without asking for a translation. There’s an odd moment where you say something offhand about the hatchings on the shard helping you to date it and she glances up, almost impressed. You shrug it off because it's just like you to mistake her wariness as appreciation. You tell her that you are looking for the tomb of Amenmer, Sorcerer to Khafre and an archaeological fairy-tale but you know it’s here. You know it.
“He thinks that this is from Khafre?” Layla asks. It seems even she cannot keep the judgement from her tone. You nod and wince. “Well, you’re both wrong,” she says and holds the ring up to the light, one spectacularly dark eye winking when the beams hit her face. “It's a Roman replica."
You gape. What the– "Are you kidding me?"
"No." She sets the ring on the table and pulls a small torch out of her pocket, flicking it to and fro above the gold. "It's a good one, but not perfect. Look here…"
She starts talking, pointing out the small inaccuracies and how the mould used to make it was obviously made of a marble dust but all you can think about is how incredible she looks, how in her element. You'll work it out in the lab later, anyway. For now you can just watch and appreciate the beautiful angel who has somehow fallen into your lap and into your life. A gift from the Gods. Eventually she seems to notice you staring and raises an eyebrow.
"What?"
"I wouldn't have worked that out without a sample. You realised it within moments. Layla that's– that's incredible."
She freezes. Then, that smile returns only this time it's soft and genuine. This is what Layla El-Faouly looks like bashful, then. Beautiful.
"I am my father's daughter," she says and brushes her curls behind her ear.
You spend the rest of the day together; Layla isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and appears genuinely ecstatic when one of your students invites her into their excavation unit. She’s delicate with the dirt, sifting through the topsoil and bagging up whatever she finds with confident hands. You intend to watch her work and are able to for about ten minutes before one of your students pulls away your attention to gather a soil analysis and then it's a flurry of one question after another until the sun dips low and the site becomes dark.
“Shit,” You whisper, and the clump of pottery disintegrates, little more than hardened mud. If you look at this empty pit for even a moment more you are going to burst into tears and then you are going to drink whatever shitty liquor you have tucked away in your university-loaned apartment.
“Tough day?”
You jump and look up to find Layla. She is squatting at the edge of the pit, forearms folded over her thighs, and she’s smiling. Always smiling.
“Something like that.”
She looks at you for a long time like she is considering something. Her head tilts. “Dinner.”
You just blink. “I’m sorry?”
“I am asking you if you would join me for dinner. My landlady left me a tagine and I have a bottle of red wine. I would be delighted if you would join me.”
You look up and notice the darkness of the sky for the first time. Normally, you wouldn’t be leaving until past midnight and too tired to eat more than one of the flatbreads in the breadbin. It is late though and Layla looks so tempting, backlit by the floodlights and the dying sun. There is nothing more that can be done here tonight.
“Okay. Yes, I would love to.”
Layla’s eyes crinkle first then her mouth splits into a grin so bright it feels like the sun has burst.
The tagine is absolutely delicious and the wine is strong enough that you end up sitting on Layla’s balcony, both of your legs draped over the side as you complain about the dig.
“Nothing’s coming up. I’m pretty sure now that it’s a lost cause anyway, but I was so sure, you know? I did my PhD on this, I know that the soil around here fits the period and this place has enough recorded evidence that unless I messed up or any of the other incredible archaeologists working on it did, I’m not wrong."
The drink has made Layla quiet and solemn but she turns her head to you at this. You try not to sink into her eyes. “If it helps, my father definitely does not think that you are wrong. He’s…” she pauses, searching for the right thing to say. “He has a lot riding on this dig. If he didn’t think that you were at least onto something, he would not have backed you on it. If nothing else, believe that.”
You do. Layla doesn’t seem like the type of woman to say something that she doesn’t mean and you know enough about the mythical Abdullah El-Faouly to believe it, too.
“Thank you,” You whisper. She nods and smiles, the wine causing it to droop slightly. She looks exhausted and you’re not surprised, you are too, the heat and the work of the day sending you spiralling into fatigue. “What are you doing here?”
The look she sends you from the corner of her eye is nothing short of withering. “I live here.”
“Not here, here. What are you doing at my dig site? Why aren’t you off doing something much more worth your time?”
She blinks off, her eyes unfocused as they trail over the city. “My father is on a hunt for… something. He won’t tell me what. But he sent me up here because he thought that there was something in this dig that might interest me. So here I am and I am going to stay until you find something because I think that there is something here too. You will find it.”
You believe her again. She seems to have that effect on you.
“And this is worth my time. You seem to have a very low opinion of yourself,” she says and you must be imagining the irritation in her tone. Why would she care?
You shrug and look up at the night sky. “Get enough angry and disappointed letters from the archaeological committee and you start to believe them.”
She tilts her head to the side so that you will meet her gaze. “That doesn’t matter now. Dwelling on the past prevents you from appreciating the present. You are here and you are doing what you were born to do. There is nothing more perfect than that.”
It is overwhelming, the support she has for you. Despite knowing her for what can’t be more than ten hours you already feel safe with her, strong, like anything can happen just as long as you stay by her side. But that might just be the wine and the heat and how beautiful she looks lit by the orange street lamps.
“Are you coming back to the dig tomorrow?”
“I wouldn’t want to miss it. Besides, Nae Hwi-Hyang and I were really getting somewhere in unit 6. Tomorrow I might even find some different coloured dirt.” Layla opens her mouth in an oh and bats her eyelashes. You reach out to push her arm and she tilts, giggling away and then you fall back too and the two of you are staring at the polluted sky, laughing and laughing.
The next day is difficult, and so is the one after that. You don’t find a lot; a couple more rings though these are correctly dated, and one of your students unearths a section of a blade that Layla gives an impromptu lecture about. She is standing in the pit, all of your crew gathered around her as she goes into detail about the methods that would have been used to make this, how sharp it would have been and, isn’t this incredible?
Yes, you think. Where Layla is concerned, incredible is always the right word.
Dinner is at yours this time and you scratch together mujadara and mansaf and the two of you eat it whilst looking over the aerials of the dig site because Layla has an eye for these things and if she can spot anything that might lead you to the tomb, you welcome it. There are moments when she passes the lemonade or a photo and her hand, soft and warm, brushes against yours and the energy between the two of you can only be described as electric.
The two of you spend so much time together that she is there, in your kitchen watering your plants when the phone call from the University comes. It is exactly what you have been expecting and dreading, you are a valued member of our faculty but we cannot afford to maintain this dig site. We are cutting your funding, we are very sorry to have to do this blah blah blah.
She holds you when you cry. It’s quiet and more reserved than you had been expecting. What surprises you most, though, is how genuinely angry she is on your behalf. There is a moment after you have stopped crying when she gets up and starts shouting about how you are clearly onto something and how the university doesn't care about history but profits. It is the sort of rant you might have gone on five years ago when you still believed that the university was concerned with anything other than the money it could bring in; before three of your digs were cancelled without more than a voicemail. You have gotten used to disappointment. Layla is unwilling to accept it, even after you say this, and if anything this makes her angrier.
She leaves early, says there is something she absolutely has to do and you don’t have the energy to call her out on her lie. Of course she is going to lose interest, what can you even offer her now? A washed up archaeologist that is about to lose their job because they were cocky and actually believed that they could find something. You hate yourself more than a little bit. Oh gods, what are you going to tell Chisisi? Sending every worker home is going to be the most depressing thing you have ever done and even the thought of it sends you into floods of tears again. Another tick off of the total failure bucket list. You aren’t even thirty, yet.
“You’re late.”
You look up and see Layla. She’s smiling, hands buried in the pockets of her trousers, and her hair curls around her head in a halo. She looks like she did the first time you saw her and it makes your chest hurt even more. What if this is the last time?
“Wasn’t feeling super motivated to come into work, if I’m honest.”
Maybe it’s your tone or the look on your face but Layla’s smile drops and you can see her hands clench in her pockets. “I actually might be able to help with that."
You sigh and try not to snap, honestly. Layla is lovely and you are sure she means well but as the daughter of Abdullah El-Faouly she just has no idea what it's like for each and everyone one of her digs to fail.
"Unless it's an extension permit and a sack of money there really isn't much that you can do," you say.
Layla’s lips flash quickly into a smile and then she pulls her phone from her pocket, spinning it towards you. The text is difficult to discern with the sun reflecting off of the screen and you're not sure what you are reading at first until– oh my gods.
You glance up at her and gape. "You're kidding. Layla."
Layla shrugs like it's not a big deal. It is. It is a very big deal. "I told you. My father really thinks that you are onto something so when I informed him of the University's decision to cut your funding he asked around. The Archaeological Society has received a generous donation for a new building on the condition your excavation and hunt for Amenmer's tomb is extended."
"That's insane," you say. It hasn't quite sunk in yet. "This is going to stink of nepotism, Layla! Am I going to lose all of my academic credibility?"
She shrugs and the smile is back. You wish her teeth weren't so white because you are blinded every time she does. It's like staring directly into the headlights of a lorry. "What does it matter? If you find the tomb, nothing else will matter. Amenmer is going to be your legacy, I guarantee it."
You raise an eyebrow. You're really not sure what you can say. "That sounds an awful lot like a threat."
The grin sharpens. Shark. "I am my father's daughter." The menace disappears from her face and she slips her phone back into her pocket, hair bouncing as she turns from you. "Carry on."
You watch her go and don't know whether you want to scream, laugh or cry. It's ridiculous. It's all absolutely ridiculous. In the end, you don't have time to do anything other than turn back to the dirt. Extension or not, Abdullah El-Faouly's money won't last forever and if you want to find Amenmer you are going to have to do a lot more digging. Later you catch a glance of Layla laughing with Chasisi, head thrown back to expose her long neck, and wonder if she doesn't have a little bit of magic herself.
The dig continues and your relationship with Layla grows. It’s fast the way you fall for her, all consuming and completely terrifying because you seem to know almost nothing about her, save for the scraps of her personality she feeds you at your regular dinners. She knows more about you than you have ever told her. You wonder if that is a gift she learnt from her father, or whether she was sent here for a reason other than supervising your dig. One night, when you’re digging through her wardrobe for a shirt that isn’t covered in still-steaming soup, you find a passport. It is her in the picture, only the name reads Soumaya Abouzeid and small writing declares her nationality as Marocaine instead of Egyptian. It’s not real, Layla knows too many side streets to have not grown up in this city, but even the sight of it hurts. She has been lying to you. What worries you more, however, is shuffling the fake documents to the side and seeing a gun. You don’t know if it is loaded or not, you wouldn’t know how to check even if you were willing to pick it up. As it is, you replace the passport and shut the drawer as quietly as possible, then change into the shirt and go back to Layla as if nothing has happened, as if your whole view of her, your whole view of what is going on here, isn’t whirling far away, like water down a plughole.
She knows that you saw it. You can tell she does the moment you bump into her the next morning at the digsite. There is an almost frightened look in her eyes, at the least apprehensive, and she offers you a coffee with a wary smile.
“It’s still hot.”
You blink at her. “Thanks.” Then turn around and disappear into the tent to look over what was uncovered yesterday. She follows you inside because of course she does, but hangs back at the entrance to the tent and waits. Part of you wants to ask, but you won’t do her the favour of starting the conversation. If she wants to talk about what the hell she has hidden in her drawers then she can bloody begin.
“Are we going to talk about it?”
You sigh, your shoulders drooping as you give up on cataloguing; you weren’t paying attention anyway. “I don’t know, Layla, are we? Should we?”
She bites her lip and flushes. “We have too.”
You snort, the sound forced out of you. Something inside of you clenches at her flinch but another part, the part that is angry and confused and, gods dammit, afraid, pushes on. “Alright then. I’ll go first. Why the hell do you have a gun in your apartment? And don’t say it’s because of a break in, you have a fucking cricket bat hidden under your bed and a Kukri by the front door.”
Layla takes long, steadying breaths through her nose like she is figuring out what to say. There is no point hurrying her so you stand, palms pressed firmly on the table below you, and wait. Eventually, she lets out a long sigh and closes her eyes. “I told you that my father was interested in your dig. That was not a lie. But he doesn’t think that you are going to find Amenmer’s tomb.”
Your heart drops. All of your studying, all of your work… for nothing? Swallow. Your throat clicks. “So what does he think I am going to find?”
Layla’s eyes snap open. “Ammit’s temple. A place of worship, a Cultus. He thinks that there might be others searching for it and he wanted it protected. He wanted you protected.”
“Me?” You scoff. “What’s so special about me?”
She looks deadly serious and something dark flickers in her eyes as she steps towards you. “Your study makes you an expert in this region. If they wanted to find the temple, all they would have to do is get you to show them where it is.”
“But I don’t–”
She cuts you off. “They won’t care. I keep telling you, something is here. And whatever it is, they will make you find it.”
It is a lot to take in. You wonder, if she had told you that first night, drinking on her balcony, that you and your work were in terrible danger, if you would have believed her. You’re not sure you believe her now. Still, you meet her eyes and nudge up your chin, jaw clenched.
“That still doesn’t explain why you are here.”
Layla gets awfully close and tilts her head so that she can look at you properly. Her breath tickles your cheeks and gods, you are going to pass out. “I am here for you. To protect you and your work. And to make sure that we find it first.”
The next words barrel past your clenched teeth. “And the gun?”
Her lips twitch upwards, amused. “A little extra firepower never hurts.”
It’s too much, it’s all too much. Her neck is warm, damp with sweat and her arms wind around you when you fall into them. There are tears on your cheeks so the next time you speak, it’s choked.
“Your name isn’t really Soumaya Abouzeid, is it?”
“No,” Layla laughs. “My name is Layla, Ya Amar. Sa'uhmik, you are safe with me.” I will protect you. Huh, funny. That is all she seems to do.
It is Nae Hwi-Hyang who discovers the entrance. Two weeks after your confrontation with Layla, the ground falls out from under her and it’s only by virtue of Layla grabbing her belt that she doesn’t make a swift introduction to the deep, deep bottom of the hole. The team sets up an anchor and Layla tells you how to rappel in hushed words, her mouth close to your ear, her breath on your cheek. Maybe it is the heat or the excitement in your gut but you don’t hear most of it, focusing instead on the way her eyes light up when you smile, the way they flick down to her lips.
Then, with a quick shout from Chasisi, it’s time to descend. Layla goes first and lets you know it is safe to come down. Below, there is everything you have worked for since the moment you found out what archaeology is. Every all-nighter, every failed dig, every disappointed call, all of it has led to this. To the woman down there. Below, is a world of history that you have uncovered. Up here is heat and sand and all of your failures. You set yourself up on the edge of the dark, dark pit, and fall into the cool black.
You don’t find Amenmer. You find a tomb, but there is no sarcophagus within, no inscriptions declaring the presence of a Pharaoh's sorcerer and no Amenmer. It almost breaks you but the thrill of finding anything is enough that it keeps you going through the winding corridors. Layla is with you at every step, Chasisi one step behind her and together you break into the main chamber to find one of the most intricately decorated rooms you have ever seen. It only takes you a moment to recognise the inscriptions on the walls, the carvings of a crocodile and pair of scales.
You are looking at perhaps the largest book of the dead of all time.
There is complete silence. Layla gasps, her torch flickering as her hand drops and Chasisi steps forward to wave his trembling hand across the wall.
“Alqarf,” he whispers.
It is incredible. It's more than you had ever dreamed you would find in your whole career, let alone on one dig. Abdullah El-Faouly was right, all of your research was right because this place is a fucking treasure trove. You stare and read. The carving is so precise you sort of want to cry because this is preserved in a way that no other has been. The archeological ramifications of this find, the scientific and cultural ones–
You are getting ahead of yourself. The walls are pure gold, not just leaf, so they feel soft and warm when you dance your fingers across them. Gems are inlaid alongside the paint to create a shock of colour. It is beautiful and overwhelming in equal measure.
Layla and Chisisi have begun to read the walls in earnest, the former snapping pictures of the script on her phone that you know she'll be pouring over all night. You smile, giddy in the knowledge that you will be right beside her.
At the centre of the tomb is a small box, intricately decorated with lapis lazuli and moulded gold. The top lifts with little protest and your eyes widen as you take in what lays inside. A golden scarab, perfect and pristine, carved so that the wings will spread from the bulk of the body.
“Layla!” You call. She is still reading the texts on the walls, her eyes and mouth wide and she can’t seem to tear them away even as she hurries towards you. “Look at this! Just look at it!”
She glances down, then her eyes flick up to meet yours and she grins. “You did it. You fucking did it!”
And then her lips are on yours and something deep inside of you slots into place. “We did it,” you whisper because there is no way you ever would have been able to do this without her. She smiles, giddy, and this time she lets you taste her. You kiss for long, long moments, and know that whatever you have found, whatever you might find, no discovery will ever be sweeter than this.
Documenting the tomb is a difficult task, an arduous one. It takes you two months from the discovery to catalogue everything, though nothing from the tomb leaves with you. The pictures are sent to the university and you expect the find to hit the front pages within days. It doesn’t. In fact, the university doesn’t respond to your emails, to your calls. Everyone from the dig goes silent and you are left entirely alone except for Layla’s occasional calls. Eventually, even she disappears.
One night, drunk off of melancholy and sick of the silence, you drive yourself out to the digsite. Everything is gone, every tent and box. Even the excavation pits have been filled back in. It appears untouched. You can’t even remember where the entrance to the tomb was. It has been hidden, apparently, by someone who was intent on it never being found. Or maybe you dreamt it all up.
“I’m sorry.”
You startle, and whip around to face the voice. To her credit, Layla looks terrible. She’s dirty, her hair is lank and she looks ill. You can't imagine you look much better.
“Where the fuck have you been?” You ask. You both pretend your voice doesn’t crack.
“I’m sorry,” She says again. “We had to– we couldn’t allow this to become known. I told you it would put you in danger, and it has.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing then? Used that gun lately?” The words sting her. You wish you cared more. “That was everything I have ever worked for. How could you?”
The sadness in her eyes disappears, like someone flipped a switch, and her lips curl downwards. “I was protecting you. I was protecting all of us.”
“Fuck, Layla, I never asked you to! Gods, why didn’t your father just close off the fucking digsite? Why would you even let it get this far?”
She doesn’t answer, has nothing more to say. The woman in front of you is nothing like the woman that walked into your digsite a year ago. It is like all the fight has been drained from her, leaving… this.
“I can’t forgive you,” you spit. “I won’t.”
Layla sags. “I wasn’t asking you to.”
You both sit in silence for a while. You know what she is about to say, to do. A part of you hates her for it.
“I have to go. There are… things I have to do.”
“Go, then.” You say flatly. She flinches again. That same part of you is glad. “I loved you, you know? I really did. You could have told me.”
Layla swallows. You wish she had. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” You laugh humorlessly. “Yeah, you said that.”
You don’t even see her leave, but a car revs somewhere far behind you, and then it’s silent again. The sand is flat, clean. It reveals no secrets. You leave a part of you behind, in that spot of desert, and you never go back for it. You pack up your modest apartment and fly back home as soon as possible. You do not miss Layla El-Faouly. No, you don’t miss her at all.
She sends you an invitation to her wedding, of all things. It's not the first time you see her after... well. After. She is still an accomplished archaeologist and you catch each other at meet-ups sometimes, to share a coffee or a glass of wine. It is stilted though, made awkward by the weight of everything that came before. But you miss her like a limb, so you RSVP and don't request a plus one. It is beautiful and Marc is brilliant, truly, but he's not you. You speak to her once, then disappear during their first dance. You cannot stand how in love they look, how Layla only as eyes for Marc and how enchanted Marc seems in return. Abdulluh El-Faouly is not there, was killed two years before by greedy mercenaries. You don't find out from Layla and instead read the news online, left to grieve in your own private way. You may never have met him, you may have resented him for what he did to you and your work, but he financed the greatest adventure of your life. Without him, you would not have met Layla. Without him, Ammit's temple would still be a legend, something so unbelievable yet so enticing. In thanks, you send a generous donation to his place of work and don't attach your name. Your debt to him, and to Layla, is paid.
The knock at your door is a genuine surprise. It’s past eleven and nearing midnight, so you grab your bowie knife and approach cautiously. Whoever it is knocks again, so loudly it rattles your teeth. When you peer through the peephole, you realise why.
“Layla?” You haven’t seen her since the wedding, since she married someone else. She looks like shit. “Are you alright? Where’s Marc?”
Her brown eyes bulge, then she bursts into tears. You don’t think, don’t hesitate, just snatch her into your arms and hold her close.
“Fuck, Layla, love. Come in, you look terrible. What happened?”
You set her up at the kitchen table, still in her dirty clothes, and push a cup of green tea at her when the tears stop. She drinks in silence for a while and you try not to let your imagination drive you crazy. “There is so much I have to tell you.”
“I am happy to hear it,” you say, and take her hand from across the table. “Whatever you want to tell me. I’m here to listen.”
Layla sets her jaw and the lost look in her eyes turns into determination and an anger that sends the butterflies in your stomach fluttering.
“What do you know about Khonshu?”
You blink at her. Ah. So it’s going to be that kind of night.
“The God of the night sky, right? Has a temple at Karnak, is called the ‘Greatest god of All Gods’. Healing, fertility, protection, all standard God stuff. Why?”
She shivers and looks off somewhere behind you. “No wonder he’s such an asshole.”
What does that even mean? “Layla, what happened to you? Where is Marc?”
The look darkens into something genuinely frightening. “I don’t know.”
Shit.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she spits. “This is all his fucking fault anyway. If he had just talked to me–” She seems to realise what she has said the moment the words leave her mouth as she flinches, and her wide eyes flick to you.
You smile ruefully. “A lesson hard-learned, I’m afraid.”
She breathes heavily and looks at you from under furrowed eyebrows. It takes her a long time to speak again. “The scarab.”
“From the dig?”
She nods. “It started with that. I… I took it.”
“Layla!”
“I know!” She shouts frantically. “I know, okay? But my father needed it and I wanted to make him proud and you didn’t even notice. And that doesn’t make it better, I know, but it happened. It doesn’t even matter now, though, because apparently it wasn’t just a fucking scarab.”
You raise an eyebrow. Throughout her breakdown you had leant back and now you’re slumped in your chair, arms crossed over your chest. “What was it, then? If not just a scarab.”
She side-eyes you. “A compass. To an Ushabti containing the bound form of the Goddess Ammit.”
You snort. “Okay.” Layla’s face doesn’t change. The bottom of your stomach drops to the floor, or perhaps somewhere much further, like hell, or literally anywhere else than this room. “You can’t be serious. You’re fucking with me. Is this why you asked about Khonshu?”
She does not look like she is kidding. “Do you know what an avatar is?”
“Uh, in hinduism an avatar is a manifestation of a deity. Or it’s a big blue creature played by Sam Worthington.”
“And do you know who Taweret is?”
Oh gods, this cannot be going where you think it is. “Hippo Goddess. Protector of women and children, right?”
Layla nods, then stands. “Right. Don’t freak out.”
“Why would I…?”
Her clothes wriggle about on her body without her even moving and her jacket shifts into a golden bodice, her trainers shift into leather boots and something shimmers menacingly at her back. You blink and it’s over, whatever trickery has taken place has created armour, apparently. Or that’s what it looks like. You try your best not to admire the way her biceps shift. Whatever history lies between you, she is still married. Think of Marc. He loves her.
“What the fuck, Layla?”
She grins, shark-like, and reaches behind her to pull something from her back. Metal scrapes and then Layla extends a set of golden wings in the middle of your kitchen. They shimmer, just like her teeth when she laughs.
“She said it was a good costume.”
“She?” You ask desperately. It’s all worth it, everything, when Layla laughs. Fuck, you have missed her.
“I have a lot to tell you.”
“Well get on with it, then. Wait– hang on. I’ll grab the wine first. I think I’m going to need it.”
Layla laughs again and the wings fold behind her, settling like they belong. Perhaps they do. Protector of women and children, huh? Taweret certainly has excellent taste. If anyone can do it, it’s Layla.
You’re digging through the cupboards to find a bottle that you haven’t opened when you feel heat behind you and you jump, smacking your head on the top. “Ow, shit!”
Layla spins you around and pouts, her long fingers trailing over the bump. Whatever magic Taweret has gifted her with is wonderful, with each swipe the pain all but disappears until Layla is grinning at you and you can finally appreciate it without feeling dizzy. The two of you watch each other for a long time, noticing all of the differences, the new scars and freckles. There is a mole on her cheek that disappears into her dimple when she smiles. You want to lick it. She is married. Stop.
Her smile turns sly like she can hear your thoughts and she presses herself against you, crowding you into the counter in turn. Layla runs her palms up your chest to rest above your heart, tongue darting out to lap her lips. “Marc sent me divorce papers. I signed them.”
“Oh thank fuck,” you breathe, and swallow Layla’s laugh with your mouth. Layla’s hands slip into your hair and her lips bite at yours and you are hers, all hers, completely and forever.
“So,” You manage around her tongue. “The wings. That a kink of yours?”
“Shut up,” She says, and laughing, you do.