❝you know, you're pretty cute, considering you're 4,000 years old.❞
❝thank you?❞
luna clair loves museums. she loves history, mythology, all that old shit. so when her best friend's dad gets a new job as the night guard of the new york national hist...
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CHAPTER THREE
❝The moon fascinates us in her simplicity.❞
Avijeet Das
✦✧✦
Ahkmenrah has never been one to complain. He considers himself an easygoing guy, all things considered. All right, maybe he was his parents' favorite, and maybe he was one of the richest kings in the Middle East, but he has kind of been locked in that bloody sarcophagus for almost sixty years without seeing a single person.
21,535 nights. 21,535 nights that he's lain awake, missing his parents, breathing in dust, thinking about the bloody prophecy that's haunted him for years. He's had 21,535 nights to think about it, and he's still no closer to figuring out what it means. He's got the basics down: he's obviously the 'infant king' and the tablet is the 'words of gold', but he has no idea what the 'key to reborn life' is, or who the hell the 'daughter of the moon' is supposed to be.
Ahkmenrah did spend about fourteen years on display in England, at Cambridge University, during which time he had a small crush on a young intern who cleaned the glass case he was displayed in. (He was sadly just a skeleton during the day, dear reader, and he wouldn't have had eyeballs, so as for an explanation: the magic tablet can do whatever it wants.) She had pretty brown eyes and a soft smile, but the problem was that she got older and Ahkmenrah was old dusty bones whenever she saw him.
But he's never seen any girl as beautiful as the one who opened his tomb tonight. She's pressed against one of the stone pillars, eyes wide and mouth agape, and he can't help but stare. Freckles dance across her skin like constellations, her eyes are the same shade of green as the jewels embedded in his old throne, and her hair (it's kind of a wreck from running for her life, reader, but this is the first time our boy has seen a girl in like sixty years, so let's cut him a little slack) looks softer than all of the finest silks in Egypt.
Here he is, standing in front of the most beautiful girl in the world, standing on his own two feet for the first time in sixty years, and the first thing he chooses to say is, "You would not believe how stuffy it is in there."
Oh, my gods, Ahk, you idiot.
It takes a moment for the girl to find her words--Ahkmenrah doesn't blame her; he'd be a little shocked if a corpse came to life in front of his eyes, too--and then she asks, in a quiet little voice, "You speak English?"
"Yes." Ahkmenrah steps out into the hall, staring around. He's never actually seen this so-called "tomb" of his before; the statues of Anubis are a nice touch, but if they were real Egyptian scholars, they'd have known that he and his family worshipped Osiris as god of the underworld. Tragically, Anubis was a fad that didn't last into the Middle Kingdom. "I went to Cambridge University."
