I lay on the beach on the island, exhausted and slowly healing from the tears on my feet from the shark's teeth, and listened to the river and the wind. I don't know how long I lay there for, it felt like hours. I thought I heard my name, and I groaned as I rolled onto my side towards the temple and the torchlight.

I saw two forms, one taller than the other. I knew somehow that they were waiting for me, and I moved, getting up slowly from the energy I'd spent swimming the river and dealing with nearly being eaten by a shark that should have never been there. I managed to make it to my feet, the sand cutting and grating on the tooth slashes on my feet, but I didn't really notice it as I headed up the beach and towards the temple that was always lit by torches.

I was still catching my breath when I passed the first columns inside the high door. I saw no one around, my clothes dripping on the stone floor that was smooth and cool for my hurting feet. I left bloody footprints behind me as I headed further into the temple, towards the spaces that were used for worship of Isis, the Mother.

I could feel the presence of humans, priests and priestesses, but I could also feel the power here, and I could also tell that there was more than first met the eye. I could feel a pull, and headed in the direction it came from. Further into the temple I went, knowing I wasn't technically supposed to be in the inner sanctums, but at the same time as I thought that, heavy doors opened for me as I came to them, opened by priests who seemed to recognize me and were expecting me. I said nothing as I passed them, nor did they speak, but we shared a glance, and I knew somehow they knew more than I did about why I was there.

The doors closed behind me, and before me was a large, well lit room with lit vats of oil burning, and torches along the walls line with stories and writings. Felt like I was at home here for the first time in almost a thousand years, surrounded by familiar things as I was. I felt someone heart-breakingly familiar near me and turned around to see a beautiful woman, just an inch or two shorter than I was, with the same blood red hair as mine, the same emerald green eyes as mine. The same face, the same features. The same smile and gentility I had once dreamed of having when I was very small.

Looking into the face of my long dead mother, I couldn't say a word. I was dirty, I was wet, I was bleeding, my clothes, so similar to her own, were torn. I had never wanted my mother to see me looking like this. She had always been clean, and she had tried to teach my sister and I the same. She even smelled the way I remembered her, always smelling of roses.

'My Mother..' was the only thing I could get out. She smiled at me as she had in her mirror the night she had died, and when she spoke, it was the voice I knew so well from the only actually happy days I'd ever had.

'Don't think that I'm not proud of you, or be ashamed to look at me. You've been through so much..'

My mother stopped talking, and she looked as if she were trying not to cry. I couldn't imagine what she might know, or what she had seen. She came up to me and wrapped her arms around me. She was solid, as if she had never died and been burned away. I could feel myself shaking, and my mother let me go, smiling, before looking up over me as another, much bigger hand set gently on my shoulder.

I turned around, blinking my eyes clear, to see a man much taller than I'd ever seen towering over me. He had long black hair, golden eyes, and you could tell that the lean build was deceptive. Religion taught stories, and if I had been human, I would have still known who he was even without being able to feel the power and presence.

He must have stood around eight feet tall, with long black hair and metallic golden eyes that had flecks of crystal blue in them. He wore the heavy jewelry that Egyptians of my childhood had worn, around the neck and around the waist that held up the soft Egyptian linen. He had golden wristbands and arm bands, as well as ankle bands and gold on his sandals. I felt like a homeless street urchin standing before him, which, looking back, I was. I had been without a home for a thousand years.

Slender hands like my own reached over my head holding a pendant made of Lapis Lazuli that I recognized and thought I had lost forever. My mother fastened her own jewelry to me slowly, armbands, ankle bands, the pendant I had been given when I'd come of age, her gold and Lapis jewelry I had worn around my waist for hundreds of years, and clean, dry, modern styled Egyptian linen, held up by a piece of the age old neck jewelry that is so well known of Egyptians in this day and age. My mother fastened everything while the male watched silently, wrapping a gold and blue sash around my waist under the gold and Lapis of the jewelry.

I looked down to find that I somehow was clean, though my hair was damp still from my long swim across to the island. My mother finished with her self appointed task and stood before me and smiled, setting a hand on my cheek before she stepped back and seemed to fade into nothing once more. I startled, reaching out for her, but she was gone, and only Horus remained before me.

I looked up at him, having to tilt my head father than I had ever had to before to meet those golden eyes, a tearful glare in my own green. 'That is a cruel thing to do. To bring my Mother from the Halls to dress me. For what purpose?'

I was angry, and I hurt. My physical injuries were nothing to the heartache I felt. The one person I had loved more than anything. Punishment be damned, I could have beaten on that man until my fists bled for bringing my mother. It had been like looking in a mirror while she had clad me in the trappings of a high priestess and her lost jewelry. I swore I would never lose the pieces again.

Horus was most often depicted as having a falcon head, but standing before me he hadn't a single feather. He stood tall, and when he spoke, it was that same voice I had heard in my dream vision that had summoned me here, and even before that, on the day of my capture by the Romans that had told me I had a job to do and would not die.

'She requested to come child. She wished you to know that the thoughts you have had these centuries were not the truth.' He paused a moment as I grew angrier, but not at him, at myself. It didn't have a coherent reason, my anger. I glared at the essential King of Gods, my anger masking my heartache. 'Why did you summon me? What do you want?'

The tower of a man smiled in a way that nearly set me at ease despite my anger and hurt. 'I brought you here because I have a job for you, if you remember.' He looked at me and I jerked my head down in a nod as I looked at him, feeling defiant and as angry as ever.

He continued. 'You will be one whom this world needs. A protector, a guide. My Mother will teach you. I will teach you. You will study from the Archives of Creation, which you will guard and protect also until such a time as it is deemed necessary.'

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I listened, shocked, surprised and dumbfounded. I was going to be a guardian of this planet? Was that what that old pigeon was getting at? To be taught by Gods, and to be put in such a place after everything that I had been through and done, I didn't know how to feel about this.

'Why? For what reason? Don't you already have enough priests and priestesses to choose from? I haven't done anything of note except let my family be destroyed.'

Again he smiled at me, and I felt like I could have hit him almost. 'You are much more than you think. No mere human could do this. None of your other family that has become what you are have the strength of will to do this job. Just you. With what you have survived and overcome..'

'You left me in Rome. It was your voice I heard when I was captured, when I nearly died. You could have freed me if I was so damned important! You didn't! And don't give me that whole 'reason for everything' shit! There was NO reason for ANY of that!' I knew I was yelling, I was livid. He made claims, gave jobs, but had left me to torture and misery for a hundred fifty years. I had lost the last of my patience, and he simply let me rail at him until I was out of breath and my temper spent, panting and in tears while he simply stood calmly and without any change in demeanor. I hated him, thinking that letting my mother come would lessen my rage at what I had lost in that dungeon. I hated him most for the loss of my blind son, who was most certainly dead. The only things I had ever wanted I could never have.

But I had no more to say without repeating myself, so I stood before him, glaring at this God who was three feet taller than me and could end my life in an instant without lifting a finger if he wanted to. And he didn't. I had treated him with the utmost disrespect, this king of gods. And it seemed as though I would not be stricken down, in fact he wasn't even angry. And I hated him all the more for it.

Finally, I felt my shoulders slump. 'Fine..'

I felt defeated, tired. I felt as if he had known from the start that I would agree, and had allowed my anger just because he knew it was there, that burning Rome hadn't burned me out.

'Close your eyes child. I wish to show you something.' He finally broke the silence, and I hadn't the gumption to do naught but as he said. I closed my eyes, and I felt his hand on my shoulder, and suddenly I felt mild, fresh air with a slight breeze against my face. It smelled of roses and lilacs, and there was the steady roar of what sounded like water.

I opened my eyes before he said I could as the most peaceful feeling washed over me. Gone was Pilak, and instead I was standing on a great flat stone of the clearest quartz in the middle of a small cove. The water of the cove was clear as the quartz, and if not for the fact that the flat stone was a few inches higher than the water level, one wouldn't have even known there was anything but water. The water was only maybe three to four feet deep, and lining the bottom were what looked like smooth semi precious stones.

It was night, but clearer than any night you may have ever seen, and the biggest full moon I had ever seen rose above the cliff where the waterfall I had heard cascaded down. The moon was odd though, this night it was a bright, bright blue. Not neon, but more jewel bright, like an aquamarine. There were flowering trees all around the little cove, white, soft pinks, even blues. And I suspected that these trees couldn't be found anywhere in the world, as it was very obvious that I was no longer in the same dimension.

Out from behind the waterfall came running a tiny tiger cub, who ran straight up to me and jumped up on my legs with a tiny little roar up at me. A sound on the smooth surface of the water made me look up, and I could see a tiny little crocodile swimming up at what seemed as fast as he could go. The sound of a huge bird in one of the trees made me look up to see an enormous falcon in one of the blue petaled trees beside the water fall.

Horus stepped off of the flat Quartz and onto the water, barely making a ripple and not sinking into the pool in the least. I didn't think that I would be able to do the same, but tried anyway. As I thought, my toes dipped directly into the water and there was an immediate sense of physical relief. I dipped my foot in entirely and the relief was indescribable. The water was healing! All of the lacerations and cuts on my feet from that misplaced shark in the river simply disappeared within seconds. I pulled out the one foot and shoved the other in, to the same effect. I could simply feel that there wasn't even a hint besides the slight red smudges on the Quartz rock that I had been injured at all.

Now I hopped off the Quartz and went around the pool rather than trying to walk on the water to follow Horus as he crossed and went towards the waterfall with the little tiger cub on his heels. When he got there he waited for me by what looked like a sold wall of moss growing. He stood slightly to my left, in front of the moss, and when I reached him he reached out and pulled what turned out to be a curtain of moss aside, revealing a cave behind the waterfall. I preceded him through into the torch lit cave.

Once inside I looked around. The cave was absolutely enormous, and I wasn't entirely sure it had an end to it. The walls were carved into with shelves that held thousands of tomes made of what looked like solid gold. There were other things as well; objects of unknown purpose, jars, scrolls, stones, even plants that shouldn't have been able to grow there. I was overwhelmed at the amount of things that were behind the waterfall.

'These are the Archives of Creation,' Horus' voice broke the silence from behind me. 'All of the knowledge and magic of the people since the beginning of our time is in this cave. Here you may learn and create safely without harming anyone. Pilak will be home to you when you are not in here. There will be those of us who will come to teach you. The creatures here are gifts from us, companions, guardians.'

I couldn't help but stare up at him with everything he was saying. I was to be taught by them? By the Gods themselves? I had a home again? I couldn't believe it. I was actually a little skeptical that he wasn't just joking with me. He seemed able to read my thoughts, which didn't surprise me, and smiled at me as if he had known I didn't take him at his word. Why should I? Not a soul but my mother had ever been honest with me in my life.

He led me back out of the cavern and around to the other side of the cove where there was a foot path and told me it led to the Realm, as he called it. The place where the Gods resided and that while I could not go there unless under certain circumstances, I should know where it lay.

Here he stopped and turned to me once more. He said that to get home, all I had to do was follow the path he'd brought me down, and speak to the spot where the path doesn't allow me to go any further with certain words, and a door back to the human plane would open for me. And he told me that wherever I live, this door will follow on it's own, as it's tied to me and not to a location, and that only me or the blood of my womb would ever be able to open the door. And since I had no children living, and my time in Rome had destroyed me, I would be the only one ever to open the door.

With that Horus left me in the Cove, and the little tiger cub came up to me slowly, looking at me with big blue eyes. I knew I needed names for them all, but that would take a little time to think of them.

For now, I had been traveling for months, swam across the Nile, nearly been eaten by an enormous shark that oughtn't have there, and been thrown into a job I hadn't asked for after seeing my long dead mother. I wasn't touching those books despite my curiosity until I recovered physically from everything. I had healed from my wound gotten when I killed the Roman, but there was still exhaustion, both physical and mental. So I instead of going back into the cavern behind the waterfall, I bent down, pet the little tiger cub on the head, and headed back down the path that he had brought me down that would return me back to the temple at Pilak.

When I couldn't walk along the path any longer, though the path looked to go on forever, I spoke the spell Horus had given that, as predicted, opened a heavy stone door completely engraved in colored hieroglyphs, and on the other side was the room in the temple that I had been dressed by my mother in; the inner temple chambers. I stepped through the door back into the world I knew and the stone door closed and the lines of the door itself faded into the wall and became a simple inscription.

I turned my back and headed towards the door that had been closed behind me when I'd gotten there, and once more as I approached it the metal and stone doors creaked as they were pulled open from the outside as I got near. The priestesses had been waiting for me to come back out it seemed. I cannot describe the expressions on their faces. They had seen the condition in which I had gone into the room, and coming out again looking as if I had never been dirty or wet or ragged and wounded just confirmed for them that I wasn't an ordinary person and those not handling the heavy doors bowed as if I were royalty.

It had been well over a thousand years since I had been treated courteously, and now it felt strange, as if it weren't for me. I kept my feeling to myself though. Showing emotion of my uneasiness to anyone was impossible for me. My expression was neutral, and as the female who seemed to be the high priestess stood and smiled at me, welcoming me with my name as if she knew me already, I hid my surprise and the sudden flare of anger that came up in me.

These people were happy to see me, happy to have me in their temple, the fortunate favored of the Gods. And all I could feel was anger at these people's smiles and their happiness. They couldn't tell such, as I was polite and courteous myself, but I didn't return their smiles, didn't share their excitement. I was grateful no one asked me any questions however, as I didn't want to answer any. It was assumed with how far I'd come that I was tired, and the high priestess led me out of the main temple and to one of the surrounding buildings.

I was shown to what looked like a newly constructed building, and the priestess told me that they had had the house built specifically for me when they had been told of my coming. The curtain was held aside and I ducked slightly as I entered the house. It was comfortably furnished, almost like my home had been when I had still been in the palace with my family as head mage and adviser to my now very distant royal cousins who had ruled the country. It was welcoming.