The Temple of Amun in the Oasis of Siwa was a beautiful old stone structure carved into a flat hilltop in the mostly abandoned village of Aghurmi. It was built during the 26th dynasty and flourished well into the Roman and Greek periods, but now large cracks and fissures can be seen on the sides of its foundation. The mud-and-brick citadel suffered a near-catastrophe in 1926 when three days of heavy rain dissolved much of it. Lying abandoned, but for recent tourism, the 800-year-old citadel stands against time, willing something else to try and destroy it.
The temple today is known as the Temple of the Oracle because of the mystical priestly seer who resided there and was supposedly able to foretell the future. He apparently used his magic to destroy that army of 50,000 with a terrible sandstorm too. The Oracle was also responsible for declaring Alexander the Great the "son of Amun" when he entered the country and saved the Egyptians from its Persian rulers in 332 B.C. When this priest greeted him with the words, "my son," Alexander's army and followers could not see the priest as he spoke and thought the words came directly from the mouth of god himself. Talk about an introduction. From then on, Alexander was revered like a modern-day Pharaoh.
Apparently dad was pretty fascinated with the Oracle after talking to Tamer too. He thought someone back then was sporting some other-worldly powers and killed that massive army when they attempted to march on the temple.
We were doing as much research on the Oracle as possible on the short hop over there. My eyes barely focused. We had been going non-stop since 5:30 a.m. this morning. Surely, I could catch a few winks before we got there. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
The black-haired girl was there of course, but this time she wasn't trapped. She was outside playing hide and seek with a boy. It was nice to see her alive and moving and having fun. The boy stalked her happily from the shadows.
When he finally caught her, he held her, inhaling the scent of her oiled hair. I smelled it too, like jasmine, brightened by the heat of the day. Then the boy produced the gold locket I knew so well and put it around her slender neck. She touched it tenderly, then touched his face.
The scene abruptly cut away.
It was the dead of night and the girl was running. She was older now. Behind her, the young man panted and ran hard, looking back over his shoulder. Their pursuers were lean and muscular men, reaching with their hands and making the earth rise and fall in front of the doomed couple.
The girl cried out to her suitor.
"It is the only way," he mouthed to her.
They kept running.
"No!" she pleaded, the words a whisper on the wind.
"I'm sorry, my love, but I must protect you."
He stopped running then and faced the assassins. He called out, "Ra commands the sun!" And light so dazzling it blinded came rushing from the heavens and filled the sky. The men stopped and covered their eyes. The girl fell and covered hers too, but Ra stared into the light, his eyes gleaming with kinetic energy, those eyes of his still seeing but totally white like they were blind.
The men withered on the ground like the light burned their flesh, but the girl stilled herself as Ra approached and knelt beside her. He placed his hands on her eyes, and when he removed them, she stared up at him, both their eyes now white and startling to look at.
Tears filled them as they knelt and held each other. "There's no time now, Isis. We must do this now. It is the only way. The Oracle said so. You know we must obey."
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HalfWorlder #Wattys2017
Science Fiction(Highest rank #12 in sci-fi). When a dangerous ancient artifact hidden by the Egyptian gods activates after millennia, the long-dormant powers of a half-alien boy come alive just in time to save the Earth. But he never imagined winning over a girl w...
