When evening fell and the town grew quiet, I returned to the small place Neseret had given me. The room was simple: a low bed of woven mats, a rough cloak thrown over for cover, a jug of water in the corner. I wasn't sure if she had taken me in because I had once helped her in childbirth, or because I seemed different to her. She never asked.
I lay down. The night air mixed its warmth with the chill of dust. Neseret lay down beside me. She was close—maybe too close. In her sleep she moved, her arm resting across my chest, then her large, soft body pressing against my side. I didn't move away. I didn't mind.
I stared into the dark. One question filled my head: why?
The gods had once told me that the Pharaoh I served had an enemy close to him. They warned me that someone in his shadow was preparing betrayal. And I believed them. I thought that was my purpose—to find the traitor, to expose him, to save Egypt in Cleopatra's time.
But it never happened.
Instead, they sent me back, into this world, into the age when Egypt was only being born. Into a time when the gods themselves had no faces yet. And now I lay here, in the room of a woman I barely knew, far from everything familiar.
"They lied to me," I said quietly to myself.
My heart beat harder at the words. The gods—the ones I trusted, the ones I served—had maybe never planned for me to save my own time. Maybe the whole story of the traitor was only a tool to bring me here.
But why?
Cleopatra… her face came into my mind. I remembered the moment I finally told her the truth. How she kissed me. How I did not answer, because my feelings had already been taken away. The gods stripped them from me.
And then they showed me her fate. They told me she would marry, she would die, she would become what the world would know her as—cruel, broken. And that I could never be at her side.
Maybe all of that was a lie. Maybe they showed me those things just so I would leave without resistance. So I would believe my time was already lost.
"Why send me here?" I whispered into the dark.
Neseret stirred in her sleep. Her arm slid across my side, her body pressing into me, her breath warm against my neck. I closed my eyes. I was still a man, and though my heart felt empty, her closeness brought me a strange comfort. Maybe because it was human. Real. Not the games of gods.
But I still had no answer.
Maybe I should have been dead long ago. Maybe I should never have existed at all. But they—Shai and Renenutet, Thoth, Isis, Hathor—chose differently. They said my fate was to guide Egypt in these early days, when even the gods were not yet fully born.
But why not my own time? Why abandon Cleopatra to the fate they showed me? Why allow Egypt to fall under foreign rule?
My fists clenched.
If they lied once, they can lie again.
And if it was truth, then my role was never to save Cleopatra, never to save her father. It was always a lie meant to push me onto a path I could not refuse.
I lay still, listening to the night. Neseret breathed heavily, peacefully, pressing close. Her warmth surrounded me. And I realized maybe this was the only real answer. Not the gods' words, but people.
Here, in this time, nothing is fixed. The gods are only beginning. Maybe it is I who must give them form. But not through their orders—through what I can build among people.
Neseret—a simple woman who trusted me, though she barely knew me. The people in the streets, who began to accept me because I helped with sickness, with weapons, with births. Maybe this was the foundation. Not divine plans, but ordinary lives.
I turned my head toward Neseret. She slept pressed against me, her face calm.
"If the gods lied to me," I whispered, "so be it. But I won't lie to people. If I must lead, I'll start with them."
I closed my eyes.
But one thought still pierced me.
If what they said about Cleopatra was true—her marriage, her death, her ruin—then I had abandoned her at the moment she needed me most. My love was broken, stripped away, but she… she gave me a kiss. A kiss I never returned.
And maybe that was the greatest lie of all—that it had to be this way.
I could not feel love anymore, but the memory remained. And memory was worse than love.
The night passed. Neseret stayed close, pressed against me as if she sensed my thoughts drifting far away. Her breathing was steady, warm. And I swore silently to myself: if the gods wanted me as their tool, fine. But I would never again let them lead me through lies.
From now on, I would choose my own path.
Morning came slowly. Light crept through the cracks in the wall, and voices from outside drifted in – women talking by the well, men driving cattle toward the river.
When I opened my eyes, Neseret was already awake. She sat beside me on the mat, the child in her arms. She held it close to her breast, letting it feed. Her movements were natural, calm, as if the whole world had narrowed to that moment.
I sat up slowly. She glanced at me, gave a faint smile, then returned her eyes to the child. It struck me then how simple yet powerful the scene was – ordinary, everyday, yet timeless. Something that had been repeated for generations in every family.
"You didn't sleep well," she said after a while. Her voice was quiet but steady. "You turned all night."
I stayed silent for a moment. It wasn't easy to answer.
"I was thinking," I said at last.
"About what?" she asked, this time looking straight at me. Her eyes were serious, not merely curious. As if she truly wanted to understand.
I didn't know how much I could tell her. The truth about the gods, about the time I came from – she would never believe it. But saying nothing was impossible too.
"About why I'm here," I answered slowly. "Why I left everything I knew behind, and now I'm starting again. It's hard to accept."
Neseret shifted the child, drawing it closer, and then spoke: "Everyone here starts again. Some lost husbands, others parents, others children. You're no different from us."
Her words were simple, but they carried truth. I had known death, loss, but never thought of it this way – that I was just another person looking for a place to belong.
"Maybe you're right," I admitted. "But there are things I couldn't control. Things that still follow me."
"They follow you?" she repeated, tilting her head slightly. "But now you're here. You live. And you have a chance to make something new."
Her gaze was direct, steady. And I felt she was right. I couldn't change what had been. I could only begin here, in this time, among these people.
The child pulled away and began to cry. Neseret soothed it, stroking its head and whispering softly. Then she looked back at me.
"You're different," she said. "You speak differently, you think differently. But people are beginning to accept you. And so do I."
Her voice faltered at the last words, as if she wasn't sure she should say them aloud.
I looked at the baby, nestled calmly at her breast, and a question that had been bothering me since last night finally slipped out.
"Neseret," I said softly, "last night, when you were asleep… the child wasn't with you. Where was he?"
For a moment, she met my eyes, then smiled faintly, as if she had expected me to notice. "Don't worry," she answered quietly. "He wasn't far. My mother had him with her. The same one who helped me during the birth. She lives in the next house, and whenever I'm too tired, she takes the little one to her. She knows how to care for him."
I stayed silent for a moment, taking in her words. "Your mother…" I repeated.
Neseret nodded. "She is old, but strong. She knows more than I do. Without her, I might not have managed at all. It was she who taught me how to hold the baby, how to feed him. And yesterday… she saw I was weak, so she took him with her. So I could rest."
For an instant, there was a shadow in her eyes — gratitude mixed with a trace of shame, as if she hated admitting that she couldn't always manage on her own. But then her voice grew firmer: "But today he's here with me. And I won't give him to anyone again, unless I must."
I watched her as she soothed the child with gentle rocking. And though her words were simple, they carried much — not just a mother's care, but the strength of a woman who refuses to be weak.