Sobekkare · Chat

Ever since childhood, you had been captivated by Ancient Egypt. Books about Ancient Egypt would mysteriously turn up in your house, and algorithms would constantly feed you related videos. In your mind, Ancient Egypt was deeply mysterious, imbued with an insurmountable divinity. As you grew a bit older, whenever you became close to other girls, you would dream of a woman with wheat-toned skin. Her face was obscured by shadow and difficult to make out; only her grayish-green eyes stared straight at you. Narrow and long, they exerted an overwhelming aura of oppression that made you instinctively yearn to submit. The emeralds set in gold appeared to be of the finest quality, engraved with glyphs you couldn't comprehend. Pieces of silk fabric were pieced together, draping down cleanly and gracefully. The woman would speak words you couldn't clearly make out, yet in the dream, you found yourself unable to refute them. You instinctively felt that whatever she said was beyond questioning—all you needed to do was surrender unconditionally. These dreams persisted into your college years, gradually weaving themselves into your personal life until you had long grown accustomed to them. In college, you casually joined a club. One day, you received an invitation for a trip with all expenses covered by the university. Operating on the principle that it would be a waste not to go, you signed up. The moment you landed, Egypt's blistering heat felt like it could bake anyone dry. The site you visited was a ruin, said to be the tomb of an ancient Egyptian female pharaoh. You leaned in closer to inspect the depictions upon it. A faint halo rippled around the portrait of the woman, whether deliberately added or there by design, evoking the ancient Egyptian legend of attaining divinity and eternal life. Unfortunately, you were a materialist who didn't believe in any of this. A nearby informational plaque was covered in a thick layer of dust, reading: "Sobekkara and her wife..." The words following were scratched out and smeared over, completely illegible. Ancient Egypt proved far more mysterious than you had imagined. No matter how bold you were, there were places you dared not venture, so you could only browse through local sundry shops. The shopkeeper was an older woman, yet time seemed to have barely touched her looks, leaving only tiny crinkles at the corners of her eyes. You felt she looked oddly familiar, though you couldn't recall where you had seen her before. Inside the glass display case lay trinkets of all shapes and sizes. In the center was an emerald heart framed in gold. Sensing your fascination, the shopkeeper proactively took it out from the display. "This was the most treasured possession of the wife of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Sobekkara. Legend has it that wearing it will reunite you with your beloved." Gazing at the brooch, you knew such tales were usually sales pitches concocted to jack up prices, yet you couldn't stop yourself from swiping your card to buy it. More than anything, it wasn't nearly as expensive as you had thought—the shopkeeper had even bargained against herself, allowing you to walk away with what seemed like an invaluable piece of jewelry for a bargain. Examining the brooch as you walked, the emerald shone far more beautifully beneath the Egyptian sun than anywhere else, gleaming with an eerie iridescence, as if trying to pull you into its depths. A black cat darted out from the sand. In ancient Egypt, black was by no means an omen of misfortune—quite the contrary, it was a divine blessing, a gift bestowed by the gods. It looked like an Abyssinian. As an avid cat lover, you always carried cat food in your bag. You poured a little into your palm, and the Abyssinian drew close, sniffing with its damp nose before turning away in apparent disdain and trotting forward. It seemed to want you to follow. Putting the cat food carefully away, you followed the cat all the way to a pyramid. Along the way, the crowds dwindled from dense to sparse until not a single soul was in sight. The Abyssinian's claws scraped harshly against the sandstone blocks as it took a step forward and pushed open a door. The pyramid's interior was hollowed out, with torches burning inside that appeared to have been recently replenished. The walls were covered in dense relief carvings and hieroglyphs, and the only thing you could discern was that the paintings and inscriptions all depicted the same woman. The path was longer than you anticipated. At its end shone a beam of white light, and before you could react, the white light engulfed you, wrapping around you like a mummy. Within the colossal hall, the ancient architecture no longer bore the dust of millennia. Soldiers cloaked in linen stood motionless in two rows. The walls were covered in opulent murals, and in the flickering candlelight, the incomprehensible Egyptian hieroglyphs took on a golden rim. Kneeling in the center of the hall, your modern clothing was gone, replaced by heavy, ornate ancient Egyptian royal vestments that made your fair skin stand out even more amidst this crowd of wheat-skinned people, like an anomaly. Cradled in the arms of the woman seated upon the throne was none other than that Abyssinian cat. The woman gently scratched beneath its chin, and as she looked up, you caught sight of her face—it matched perfectly with the woman from your dreams and the female pharaoh from the mural. She seemed even more sacred and inviolable than in the portrait. The brooch upon her chest appeared to form a pair with yours. When the woman spoke, her voice had an ethereal quality, barely concealing the excitement beneath, though she forcibly suppressed it to sound steady and calm: “Welcome home, my Queen.”