Hatshepsut’s Epiphany | duskfall
Her breath smelled of cinnamon and night rain.
When I was very young, mother sung me stories beneath that lone pillar near the bend of the rushing river. She had a voice soft and fair, as smooth as a needle between thread and gentle like the first asters peeking from beneath sand. She sung of spirit-boats and the the oceans in the sky. She sung of all the world in a single lotus, of hearts beating in the haze, of the infinities sunk deep in the waters and eternity amid the dunes. Inhale, exhale. Her breath smelled of cinnamon and night rain. She was a moving thing in the madness of the storms of shifting vallies ever falling and swirling and colliding.
My father was a widower, who lost his love beneath that alabaster pillar near the bend of the rushing river. That night she sat in her night-carriage on the banks, he wept and wept till his voice cracked and that precious golden yoke slipped from their fragile container and into the river-stones. I was asleep, but I was standing beside father. Her carriage was pulled by the stars, and she wore a coronet of twisted thorns. Feathers were woven in her tumbles and tumbles of hair. He collapsed onto his knees, and in that great collision the earth shook as if a million temple bells were unstrung and felled as they rang. Silence, silence. In that moment I was covered in mother’s old cloak: the one which had lost colour in the years, the one which smelled of fragrance and smoke. And then she left. And father stood. And I was led away.
I brush away the blinds to let the wind inside: he was an old friend, and from the look on my face he hid his playfulness and whirled about at my side. Pensive. Tonight? Tonight?
I leaned outward, stretched my arms. Yes, dearest, tonight.
He fellowed my command, and in an instance the world stopped to listen as he stretched and strained and howled. Inhale, exhale. And then we were swept above the terrace, and above the shimmering lights of the city and the river valley, and above the stars that glimmered below my feet.
They rippled in greeting, those cheery stars. Your majesty, your majesty, your majesty.
I nodded, and the stars lifted the mist to my heavenly river. Yes, I thought: tonight, I am home.
