Work Text:
“When’s your birthday?”
Anu paused as the question dropped, like a pebble tossed into still water.
Birthday.
A commemorative day of when a person is born.
He should know this. He’s supposed to. The Empire of Egypt keeps notes of everything, from past to present.
It will celebrated with offerings, with music blocked out by echoing laughter.
He’s seen such celebrations, with children smear fingers in honey and men racking laughter while the women smile at their young infants, praising the day they entered this cruel and dangerous world.
A year complete, another soon to close with the Gods.
But somehow, this feels… unfamiliar. The world is almost thin to him.
He blinks once, rethinking.
It has been 15 years since his eyes opened to this world, since he was placed as the Son of the Nile.
Or has it been more?
His gaze drifts to his hands— lightly scarred, yet remaining smooth and strong.
Hands that would belong to someone to witness 180 moons pass through the cosmic abyss of the nightsky, lit of stars.
But yet…
Something aches, it’s heavy and it’s dull… as if something more should be there.
There should be more, but why can’t he think of anything? Days stacked upon eachother until it blended and stretched into a haze he cannot comprehend.
He imagines his birth.
A room filled with midwives.
His mother’s quiet voice, strained but triumphant.
The first cry.
The first breath.
A date marked, sealed and archived to the lineage of royals.
There is nothing.
No beginning.
No first memory.
Nothing.
It was as if he became… aware, when he opened his eyes to a blurry face unrecognisable, and there he was.
It’s been so long…
He can’t tell anymore.
The idea turns over and over in his mind, growing stranger with each rotation.
A single day to anchor a life.
A fixed point.
Something.
The sun warms his skin, and for a moment he has the unsettling thought that he has felt this warmth before. Not just fifteen cycles of it.
But more, far more.
Enough that the sensation has grown familiar.
…
“I…”
Anu lets the words trickle down his mouth.
”… Can’t remember.”