Things changed after that event for me. Word spread, and people seemed to make special trips to the temple in hopes of finding 'the healer' of the temple. Officially that was not me. But people were coming in hopes of the things I could do. I found a sort of contentment in it, though it was taxing on my mind, body and soul. I thought this was the sort of thing I was supposed to do. This was my job. People brought their children, their sick relatives, sought help with bad crops. Anything and everything that had to do with healing of anything they brought to me to help with.

I no longer remember how many lives I saved, or the remedies I made, or the herbs I taught people about. I started to teach minor things to the temple priestesses so that they could do things as well. Herb mixing and poultices and what to soak bandages in, those kinds of things. We worked together, and for a full decade I found that I was content, though I held to one personal rule; I would not help a Roman. I turned away more than one wounded Legionnaire with no explanation. I would not even say anything to those who brought them to me. I could not bring myself to help someone I saw as part of what had happened to me for so long even if I couldn't remember most of what had happened.

I was occasionally asked why I never smiled by a new priestess or person come to the temple. I don't think I knew how to, even if I was happy or content or in a good mood. I never answered when asked why. It was no one's business.

The only person at the temple I felt I considered a friend was Ahnesh, and I watched her grow wiser in the twenty years since I had turned up on the shores of Philae in rags to meet Horus and my mother. What I found frustrating is that Isis had told me that Horus would be coming to teach me as well, and in ten years there had been not a single word, no sign, no omen, no message from him.

* * *

There came a day when one of the priestesses came hurrying to find me and said that I must come at once. I thought that perhaps it was Horus come finally to teach me what he would, and I excused myself from the group of people who had come asking for potions for rudimentary things. Another priestess could take care of it at this point, and I went with the girl to find out what was going on. But I wasn't brought to the temple main, or to the inner chambers that Ahnesh and the other priestesses and I had exclusive access too.

Instead I was brought to a little room in a part of the temple I had never bothered to visit. The young priestess ushered me inside and I was surprised, almost shocked. In the bed in one corner was Ahnesh, who was near fifty now, older than most of the people of the time lived thanks to the things I had learned. But it wasn't the woman I knew and was fond of.

I had not actually seen her in months, and she had wasted away. She was so thin I was surprised that she was still alive. This couldn't have been something new, a person didn't waste away like that overnight, and I found myself angry that no one had come to me about this sooner. I sat on the edge of the bed and my friend looked at me with sad eyes from her place propped up on a few pillows. By now she knew me well enough to know the expression on my face. I asked her why she did not come to me sooner, when she had become ill, rather than waiting until I was not sure I could save her.

'Because I do not want you to save me.' How she said it with a smile I don't know. How someone could want to waste away and die I couldn't fathom. The spirit this woman had, even as she could no longer walk or get out of bed, was something I had taken a little comfort in secretly for years. It is what you would call today an 'indomitable spirit'. She was unwavering in her kindness, and she was a gentle woman, though firm. As a person she reminded me a little of my mother, though they looked absolutely nothing alike. And now my friend was dying.

I could see it before my eyes, and I knew there was no room this time for argument with her. At over fifty, she was older than most people lived, and she had suffered with joint pain and limited movement the last seven years that she had come to me for remedies to ease the pain, as well as for the strange cough that she had developed the last two years. She hadn't let me cure her either time, telling me that she believed that people couldn't be saved from everything, and she was an old woman by standards of the time. I assumed she would just say the same now, so I didn't try to argue with her.

She smiled, the same smile she had greeted me with twenty one years before when I had come to the island and she had been expecting me, and she took my hand in her own thin ones.

'Our time here is coming to a close, you and I. You..you will live on to heal people, but not here. Your destiny is not to live on this island forever as the priestesses do.' She paused, coughing just a little before continuing.

'There is someone waiting for you, though they don't know it yet. A person beyond the likes of which you have ever known. Not a God, but no human either. Someone who will be kin to you one day, and who will teach you everything she knows. You are strong now, but with her help, you will become so much more.'

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I listened until she fell to coughing once more. Ahnesh was known for having visions among our little community. Outside those who lived at the temple, it was unknown. Here though, I knew she'd seen. I waited patiently for her coughing to subside before I asked her who this person was.

'You will know her when you meet her. You know the feeling I speak of. Follow that and you'll find her. Leave before dawn, but tell no one. You needn't have anyone follow you or try to tell you not to leave the temple. You do not owe anyone here anything, and I will be gone before dawn myself, so there is nothing to tie you here. Promise me you will go.'

I could only give her my word, not about to refuse her dying wish. She smiled again, and released my hands, telling me to go back to my little house and not to come back to the temple at all no matter what or who might tried to summon me. She told me to take the bag of coin on her night table, that it would last me for some time.

I got up and picked up the drawstring bag, pausing to thank her for everything. I wanted to save her, but she had said she would not allow it, and I had to leave the room abruptly before I disregarded her wishes as I had done with my sister and save her anyway.

I didn't stop to speak to anyone, though I think I heard my name called by more than one person as I walked, keeping my eyes forward and not looking at anyone. I didn't stop until I got to my little house where I had now lived for more than two decades. It was the first time since I had been a human child that I wept, the first time since I had hardened under my father's treatment that I felt any sort of emotional pain.

People came to see me, but I turned them all away. Let the priestesses deal with them. As the sun set, I knew that Ahnesh was leaving, as she had said. There was a different feel to the air, an emptiness where she had been that stuck out like a sore thumb, and I knew she'd gone.

I could have spent a river of tears for my friend, but none now came, as if my body would not allow it. I stood from my bed and went to the room where food and water had been kept for me for twenty years. I had several water skins, and filled each one with water from the barrel. I then started putting things into the sack I had found folded in a corner. I took my few belongings and packed them, put on my mother's jewelry, braided my hair so that it would be out of the way, and filled the rest of the sack with food that would last. I took potatoes and bread and dried fruits and cheeses. I hadn't touched meat even once since the day I left Rome, and didn't pack any now.

Now, one of the things that Isis had taught me was to instantaneously teleport, which I called 'blinking' and she simply called traveling. And I mention this now because I could have just blinked to any location I wanted instantly, and I decided not to. I decided I would take the long road as any human would, and I went out of my house on foot with the bag of gold Ahnesh had given me under a fold of fabric of my skirt. I waited until it was fully dark before leaving my house. No one was around, presumably because of Ahnesh's passing, and I walked with my purpose in my hands to the docks, my bare feet not making any kind of sound in the sand. I got into one of the boats, heedless of whose it was aside from making sure it was empty, and I set my things down and took up the oars.

When I got to the mainland after a long boat ride, though it was exponentially better than the swim I had had to get to Philae in the first place, I docked the boat and took my things, asking where I could buy a horse to take me north where I could catch a ship going across the sea. I could have gone south, but I wanted to visit Karnak and go to Alexandria before heading across the sea.

In the closest town, at dawn, I bought a jet black stallion and everything I needed to take care of him. I loaded everything I owned into the saddlebags and patted the beast on the neck before mounting up. I tossed an extra coin to the handler before heading off at a trot. I had not, and refused to, look back towards the first home I had had in over a thousand years. I sat straight and tall in my saddle, an expensive sword on my hip along with my mother's jewelry. I found that the people saw me and knew me from those I had healed on Philae. My looks were still outlandish in Egypt, where most people were dark haired. And those who weren't were often either light skinned but dark haired or golden headed. And the few people who might have red hair did not have the same bloody hue as mine.

People who didn't know of me thought I was royalty, I don't know if it was my mother's jewelry that I wore at all times, or if it was how I carried myself, but people moved out of my horse's way, sometimes bowing as I went by. Those who had heard of me, often called me a Goddess in the flesh because of what I could do. And my name only spread, as I healed and helped people as I traveled. Nights I stopped in towns or would buy a bed or pile of hay in someone's barn for the night. I was able, but didn't want, to sleep on the ground. Twenty years of having a good bed had spoiled me, and I liked my comfort.

Months it took me to get to the Delta, and I was honestly devastated to find that the Romans had burned the one place I had always wanted to go to; the library at Alexandria, hundreds of years prior, before my capture at their hands when my family and I had been in hiding being hunted. Sure, I had read every book in the Archives Horus had entrusted to me, but I had wanted to visit the greatest library in the world all the same. It was one thing to see and read the library of the Gods, which was of course massive, but it was as expected. The library at Alexandria was made and collected by humans and was the greatest place of knowledge anywhere. And I arrived four and a half centuries late. To this day I still mourn the lost opportunity, more than two thousand years later.

As a result, I promptly booked myself passage on a ship, planning to take my horse with me. I no longer wanted to stay, but would take the trip straight to Greece, leaving in the morning. I stayed on the ship rather than an inn where people might bother me. Here there were only the crew getting ready to sail at dawn, and I would not be disturbed. I settled in the little room with all the supplies I had gotten earlier in the day, set to wait until dawn for setting sail.

Waiting on the ship meant that I didn't have to socialize, which I was in no mood to do. I took my time getting my horse settled below deck, brushing him, putting straw down, feeding him. I was content to simply talk to the horse and take the kind of care as I had with any other horse like him. I somehow didn't seem to like anything but jet black stallions in the last twenty years. Aside from the people I worked with and healed, I tended to stay by myself and liked the animals more than I did people.

I went to my little room after I finished getting my horse settled in and taken care of for the night. It was and wasn't quiet on the ship. Below deck was silent where I was, but I could hear the crew loading supplies and shouting to one another above me and in the back of the ship where everything was being packed.

I didn't leave my room until the sun started to lighten the sky. I went up to the deck and faced the sun, the wharf was silent for the moment. The wind was in my face and I closed my eyes to feel it and greet the day. I watched the sunrise, and as it did people started to emerge from their nooks and those crossing the sea came to board the ship. I paid no one any mind for the moment, and thankfully no one came near me, too busy with their own business to interrupt me.

It wasn't much longer before the ship set sail and finally moved away from the docks. The wind had shifted to the North rather than the East, and the sails were full. I left Egypt finally then, and to this day I have never been back.