1990 B.C. Waset, Egypt.

My father was the head Mage in the Pharaoh's court, among other things aside from being related. My father's sister was the Pharaoh's Queen. My mother was a freed slave from parts unknown to me for the longest time. No one ever told me. I had two older twin brothers, who were four years older than my sister and I, and we are also twins. My brothers both looked like our father, while my sister and I looked like our mother. The only difference was that my sister had my father's lilac eyes, while I had my mother's emerald green ones.

I was born first, then my sister, before dawn of the twenty-first day of the eighth month in the annual cycle. Now I must explain that I was born in a time before there were twelve months in a year, and the eighth month was not August, but October. July and August were not added to the calendar until Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire. Though I am not here to tell of the Roman history, but my own.

I was told that the morning of my birth was clear as crystal, Ra riding up the sky like a golden orb. It was the growing season, after the Nile flooded so that farms were fertile with silt, but not yet dry. Because of my father's position in his brother in law's court, we lived in the palace of the capital of the Upper Kingdom; Waset. It wasn't moved to Cairo until a couple thousand years later.

As I grew into a toddler, I was smarter than my siblings and already getting into mischief. I 'washed' my sister's hair with clay, threw clods of dirt at her. She first got me back when we were two, by getting my dress stuck in a thorn bush near the river where we were playing with a few of the guards and our mother. My brothers just laughed, being six and us two. My sister wobblingly ran away to hide behind my brothers as one of the guards came up.

I was scratched, my dress torn and stuck in the thorns. The guard came up and dislodged me without a word before picking me up. Even now I remember that he had the most beautiful pair of indigo colored eyes I ever saw. He handed me over to my mother and gave a small bow before going back to where he had been with the other two guards that were with us.

As I grew older I stopped with the obvious pranks, I spent time with my mother, wanting to be just like her when I grew up, especially where I looked just like her. Blood red hair and emerald eyes and pale skin. I didn't know then that my mother was not Egyptian, I just thought her and the indigo eyed guard were the most beautiful people I had ever seen, because they were different from everyone else that had black hair and brown eyes.

It wasn't until I was four that things began to go downhill and spiral out of control. I would hear low voices talking among the guards when I would go by. My parents seemed to be angry with each other, the reason for which I found out not long after.

* * *

There came a night in the growing season where I was with my mother in my parents rooms. I was small, but I liked to brush my mother's hair and imagine what I would be like when I grew up. She smiled at me through the mirror. There were sounds outside in the halls, and when I put down the brush and asked my mother if something was wrong she said not to worry. She got up and left the smaller dressing room for the bedroom to go check on what might be happening and I fell off the stool when I heard the crash of the door being slammed open. The guards said horrible things to my mother that I didn't understand the concept of, being only four years old at the time, but their tones sent shivers of fear down my spine.

I didn't leave the dressing room, but hid behind curtains when I heard my mother yelling for help and the guards were doing I didn't know what to her and laughing, calling her names I didn't understand.

It was a long time before total silence fell, and still I stayed behind the curtains, too afraid to even move or make a sound, and too afraid to go and see what had happened to my mother. I got tired, and made no sound as I sat down behind the curtains with my knees pulled to my chest. I don't know how much time passed before I fell asleep from fear and exhaustion, but I woke suddenly to the sound of something falling over in the bedroom where my mother was. I didn't know if it was my mother, or the guards come back. Too scared to stand up again I huddled behind the curtains trembling uncontrollably as I heard footsteps come into the room and the lamp that had gone out was lit again. I closed my eyes and put my face to my knees, trying not to cry, only to let out a terrified and strangled sob.

The footsteps immediately came closer and the curtain was whipped back. My head shot up to look at who was there. It was the guard with the indigo eyes. I stared up at him while he looked surprised to see me there. He cast a glance back toward the bedroom where my mother was before he looked back at me and bent down.

He picked me up while I kicked and pounded my tiny fists on his arms, afraid that whatever had happened to my mother would be happening to me next. He just spoke softly that he wasn't going to hurt me, that I was going to be alright, he would bring me to my father. When I realized he was telling the truth I stopped fighting him and he brought me close, stroking my hair. Being safe, I was finally able to relax a little, and I broke down crying, asking what had happened to my mother and hugging my arms around his neck tight as he brought me from the dressing room to the bedroom.

He tried covering my face so I didn't see anything, but it didn't work. My mother was lying on the floor, bruised and bloodied with her clothes torn half off her body. I only cried harder and pressed my face into his shoulder so I wouldn't have to see my beautiful mother in such a state, knowing somehow that she had gone to Osiris and I would never see her again.

The indigo-eyed guard brought me to my father's study while I still trembled in shock and cried for my mother. I was held by the guard while he spoke to my father, telling him what had happened and how he had found me. The guards that had 'raped and beaten' my mother to death. He had heard talking about what they had done and he had gone to investigate, he told my father.

The entire time they talked I clung to the guard's neck tight. I didn't want to see what must be my father's stricken face. I couldn't stop shaking, and though my tears had run out, my face was puffy and red and tear stained. I was afraid what had happened to my mother would happen to me and I clung tighter to the indigo eyed guard when my father tried to take me from him, making a strangled sobbing sound as my father pried me from the guard without a word and took me to my room and put me to bed. He said only that I would not soon have the time to be afraid or mourn my mother before he left.

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* * *

It was three days after my mother's funeral pyre that I found out what my father had meant. The day after, my cousin, the Pharaoh, held a Court where my father announced that I would become his heir as the Head Mage of the Court instead of my eldest brother as was tradition. I would be the first female to be such. I would learn to read and to write and to use the potential for magic that my father said I had in abundance. Such things were unheard of for females in that time period.

Everything in my life changed. I was no longer allowed to spend time with my brothers and sister. From right after the morning meal, until the evening one, various mages and scribes of the Court, my father included, would be teaching me the intricacies of magic, reading and writing that I must confess I had absolutely no interest in whatsoever.

Days went by and turned themselves into weeks where I did not get to go outside, or leave the room where I was sat amongst the dusty and disorganized scrolls of papyrus and tablets of sandstone. My sister and my brothers were to forget they had another sibling, my father said once, as I was better than they were and did not have the need to be around riffraff. My father had grand plans, he said, though he never went into detail of what those plans were.

I learned of the hieroglyph language and how to write it in ways that were articulate rather than staring at them and not knowing what they said like before. It wasn't easy, but my father expected me to pick things up quickly without exception, and if I didn't, my lessons would last deep into the night hours until I did get it. And if I fell asleep from exhaustion from the long hours, I could expect either a whipping or a switching when I was found.

It wasn't until I turned six that I got fed up with the strict schedules and isolation from the rest of the world. I snuck out to where my sister and brothers were all playing different things. My sister had a handmade doll that looked brand new with it's white cotton and fresh straw.

I felt out of place in approaching them all, it had been over a year since my mother died and I had been taken into the archives. My brothers looked at me like I was the one who had killed our mother and before I could get too close, my brothers were throwing mud clods at me while my sister sat by the side and neither said nor did anything. But instead of getting sad and running away, I got angry and picked up handfuls of clay. They had better aim than I did and I mostly missed them, all the while my sister looked on horrified and finally ran, calling for the guard because I had given up throwing mud and rushed my two ten year old brothers. They called me names, a thief for taking away their birthright for one of them to become the heir of our father's legacy, whatever that was.

I got my hair pulled to the point their fists were coming away with it, they scratched my face and arms and bite me when I tried to make them stop. They hit me with their sticks that they had been using to bat around clods of mud before my arrival. My lip split, I bit my tongue, I yelled and screamed and spat blood in their faces. They had shoes, while my small feet were dirty and bare like my clothes and hair.

They had been well cared for while my skin paled more in the dim light, sometimes the food made me sick, and I dulled in the dark. They on the other hand seemed to be lavished with good things, like my sister's new doll, and my brothers' shoes, and they all had new clothes and healthy looks about them.

Suddenly someone pulled the three of us apart angrily. It was my father. I had a couple of spots where my hair was missing, my lips were swollen and bleeding, and one of my eyes was swollen mostly shut from getting kicked. I was dirty from the dust and soot of the archives as well as from the mud that had been thrown at me. I reached for my father and began to cry finally. These were my siblings, what did I do??

Seeking solace from my father was like poking a cobra with a hot stick from the fire. He brought me by my arm back up to the palace where he berated me for leaving my lessons and what was I thinking I could play with lesser children?? When I tried to ask why I could no longer play with my own siblings my father slapped me across the face. One guard came up and was ordered to give me twelve lashes with his whip for disobeying the rules and for talking back. I glared tearily at my father's back as he left me alone to my punishment that I did not feel I deserved.

* * *

I had been excused from the rest of the day's lessons. I had spent the afternoon crying by myself. I had not been given the midday meal and not only was I hurting as the torches were lit, but I was hungry, hurt and confused along with physically beaten.

Someone came into my room while I cried on my bed and set down beside me with a bowl of what smelled like steaming water. I lifted my head a little bit, trying to hide the black eye my brothers had given me.

He didn't say anything to me this time, but he torn open the mess of muddy shreds that the back of my dress had become and took some clean linen to the hot water. I wasn't used to gentle guards, so the tenderness with which he seemed to clean the welts and bloodied splits in my flesh where a rock clod had cut me or where the whip had been rougher than necessary for a six year old.

The hot water stung on the welts on my back, but I didn't flinch or make a sound the entire time that the guard cleaned me of the mud and blood. After some time it seemed that he had finished, but then just as I was about to look up to make sure he had gone, I felt something touching my tangled and muddy hair. I hid my face to hide the tears. It had been months since I had been allowed to wash, or to have anyone near me who wasn't drilling some sort of information into my head. It was my belief at the time that I was either hated, or had been forgotten. So to have someone carefully tending not only my wounds, but also to the filth my own father had allowed to accumulate by not allowing me to have the comfort that my 'lesser' siblings so obviously got was tear inducing.

It hurt to cry, but I made no sound as the mud was washed from my hair and finally, whomever it was actually spent the time to take a horsehair brush to my hair and brushed out the tangles and the knots. This kindness that I was being shown for what seemed like no reason simply was too much for my heartbroken six year old self. The detangling of my very knotted hair was painful, but I said nothing.

Finally the strokes of the horse hair brush were smooth and I found that my hair had grown almost a foot in the two years since my mother had died, judging by how long it felt. I still hid my bruised face and blackened eye, but a familiar voice asked me to sit up. I did as told, not knowing if the Indigo Guard, as I had begun calling him to myself, was prone to anger at being disobeyed like my father was.

It was painful to sit up because of the whipping I had taken, but not as painful as it had been before, the man having tended to the bloody and mud caked welts. I could only see out of my right eye, as my brothers had kicked the left; it had an ugly blackness and was swollen shut. My cheeks were tear stained, and my usable eye was red rimmed from tears.

My eye must have been worse than I thought, because the Indigo Guard stood up without a word and went to speak with one of the guards my father had put outside my room when I had been brought back earlier in the day. He spoke to the other guard too low for me to hear, but a few minutes later he returned to me with a cup of what looked like pink-ish red tea, which he handed to me and said I needed to drink the entire thing and crossed his arms in expectation.

It didn't taste like tea. And it was cold as well. He didn't tell me what it was when I asked, simply said to drink it. That it would make me feel better. I scrutinized the liquid for a moment before drinking the contents of the small clay cup, and the man uncrossed his arms. I coughed heavily, as the liquid hadn't tasted like anything I had had before and it was unpleasant to me.

The sensation that went through me was an entirely different story. It was as if all of the sharpness of the pain disappeared in an instant. The welts on my back tingled under the bandages that had been wrapped over them. And my eye..my eye suddenly was able to open. I reached up to gingerly touch it and found that all of the swelling had gone away, though I could see that my skin was still darkly bruised.

'What did you give me?' I asked him as he knelt down to inspect my eye himself.

'Never mind.' Was the only answer I got.

I looked down at my grey-brown, filthy and now destroyed dress and wondered how it was that I was supposed to wear it any longer, as I didn't have any other things to wear. The Indigo Guard turned my face to the left then, and on the bed beside me was a new dress laid out of white cotton. He stood up.

'Your hair will not get so knotted if you braid it. You are going to have to learn to do more than one thing at once. Bring your brush to the archives, brush while you read, and then braid. When you have your meals, save some water and carry a cloth to wash with while you read. No one is going to take care of you. You have to do it.'

All I could do was nod silently and then watch him leave without another word. When the door had closed and the footsteps had faded down the hall, I got up, no longer in nearly as much pain as I had been. I turned to pick up the dress, and when I did I found that there was what was very obviously fresh, still steaming bread, and when I looked around I noticed a small water pitcher on a table.