Word Count :: 565 :: Some things to note: Sa'adat speaks a marginal amount of English and not very well, so communication might be hard -- but hopefully amusing eventually. On a more important note, she's currently suffering from some sort of illness picked up on her journey over from Africa; this'll fade eventually, but right now it's probably possible for your character to get sick too. She's delusional in this post, and will probably be a bit confused in subsequent posts -- she thinks she's dead, in the Egyptian underworld of Duat. Two-leg refers to Optime Luperci; she doesn't know the word Optime. Umm means mother, abi means father. Ka is the soul, ba is the body. And yes, she did pass out at the very end of the post -- feel free to have your character find her unconscious, or just as she comes too; either way, she will be coming back to the real world in the next post. 50% Mearns coyote, 50% Jackal hybrid

She couldn't remember when her thoughts had gone from coherent to bubbling images of worn hieroglyphs — when did she board a ship? When did the warmth of her deserts become the more mild air of temperate lands? When did she wash ashore? The eyes of their Gods watched her, staring with prejudice and hate and disdain as she had fled from Cairo and her mother's harsh grasp. They were faces she knew and did not know — faces she respected and feared. Horus, Geb, Nut, Ptah. Anubis. Osiris. Death. The Gods of those two-legs from Egypt were not her Gods, but she feared them and their power, knowing they had power over the earth her small paws walked upon. Her emerald eyes had seen it in the dusty streets of Cairo, a world her umm had tried so hard to shield her from.

But it hadn't worked. Sa'adat had left with a desire to feel the world as her own person and found herself lost to the old world on the shores of another, disoriented and distressed. How had she found the shores she stood upon? When had the lands turned from dusty to grassy? When had her head started to ache so much? The air was warm, unable to filter properly through her lungs, and her mind twisted into the world of delusions as her legs carried her from shoreline to darkened forest in what seemed like seconds. Seconds that took her from her world and through Abtu, allowing her to settle finally in the world of Duat. Had the ka of Na'ima Nafthima bint Zakirya al-Mahgrib truly left her ba behind, to walk amongst the dead in the underworld of her falsified home?

The glossy crowns of many skulls lined an invisible border to an invisible world that lay behind them — behind the heads of so many who had come to pass. It had to be, the world of the jackal-headed two-leg that weighed the worth of those who passed on. But where was he, this Anubis who was not her God? And why was she, what her umm called a child of Allah, at his gates? Perhaps her umm had been wrong. Perhaps she had changed when her umm had fled her home, and in that one gesture become a child of Misr, of the Nile river that cleaved her world in two? She had not believed it possible, as her time within the city of Cairo had been a lonely time, but were Gods not more inviting than their mortal creatures? And she had never known Allah, not as her umm had.

Perhaps the world before her was a world where she belonged, in the arms of the Osiris. She found her resolve, her belief that this was a world for her, and the yelping call in hope of acceptance was released — the only call she was sure she would make. The intense rush of air caught the woman off-guard, her small body sinking to the ground. Her mind twisted again, the dark shadows of the trees creating monsters in their wake, grinning faces and pyres that she had feared in her childhood. Faces of her abi and his family, or the abi her umm accepted. Blackness wrapped around the features of the damned Sulayman's face as her consciousness left her.

Word Count :: 426 :: Didn't bother to translate her Arabic, but she's basically just asking Hemsut for protection of her soul.

It seemed as though the darkness continued for days, the mind of the small woman wandering about in the darkest of circles. She touched the trees but felt nothing beneath the pads of her delicate fingers. Green eyes watched the blurry figures of others in the distance, shapes she was unfamiliar with but wished to be a part of. Her umm had left her so lonely — but that was the way of it, she claimed. Why would her Sa'adat need the company of others? They could not understand her. They did not need her. She was alone, only with her umm, until the end of days came to them. She was pariah, undesirable. Her mother made it so. It was this that sent her thoughts back into her head.

Cool emerald gaze fluttered open to peer at the golden face of someone unknown — though she was not afraid, all of her muscles turned taught. Strangers were dangerous. This was something that she had been taught early, something she had absorbed, something she remembered. But this place was not the place of her umm, the world of those who were alive. How could a stranger be a danger to her at the gates of Osiris' kingdom? In a display uncommon in the silent woman, one frail hand extended to touch the strong features of the man who held her.

The gesture was interrupted quickly — before she could come into contact with his golden fur, her body protested. Her joints ached, her stomach knotted, and all at once she tore herself from his grasp only to gag and release a wailing moan of discomfort. Something was wrong. The dead did not feel, they did suffer illness, and yet she could feel the nausea overtake her as she vomited onto the grassy earth beneath her, twisting her body away so as not to startle off that which had found her. Her small figure heaved under the weight of her kaftan, fingers digging to remove the belt that constricted her ability to breathe.

"Hemsut، وحماية روح بلدي." A fear lingered in her voice as cold realization that death had not come stuck to the mind of the fake Egyptian, as her voice called to Nile Gods for protection of a spirit that had not yet left her. She was not ready to pass on, even as another wave of pain racked her limbs and stomach. Another gag, another heave, before she tried to pull herself from the ground. She couldn't stay amongst the dead — they would surely take her with them.

<3 A bit rambly; sorry. And I did translate this round; I really hate using Arabic letters. >.> Stupid lack of transliteration tools.

Her mind wandered to nothing, the sickness burning up her thoughts before they were formed. She heard words, she heard a voice, but it was all jumbled and confusing. It was not a mother tongue. It was not what she was used to, but it was enough to make her head turn to finally look at the golden man. Come, he said, the only word of English she could decipher from the jumble of foreign syllables and tones. A splotch of black lifted from him, cast off into the sky while the hooved creature snorted uncomfortably. More words, more confusion. She was supposed to go with him, but where was she being taken? This was no the underworld she had believed, yet it held the gruesome facade of death and decay.

She tried to free herself from his grasp, but he held strength her small body never would and she was forced to be lead by him wherever it was he felt she belonged. Still, she tried to twist away; his fingers held her, bruising the skin beneath her fur in a moment that was her own fault. "ندعها تفلت من أيدينا ، وهذا يضر!" Her voice sounded unfamiliar to her own ears, for it was not a place she should have spoken — it was clear enough that this creature was a man, and what she perceived as a bold outburst would have killed her mother. Where did he expect her to go? What world had she found in her delusional stupor, lined with skulls and smelling of death? Fear overcame her for reasons that were silly, and her struggles became more fevered until exhaustion overtook her sore muscles. There was little she could do — there was little she should have been doing. She was at the mercy of a stranger.

Her world had been small, lived only with a mother that had constantly feared. Sa'adat had not suffered what Haifa had. Where her mother had worried at the face of each new stranger, Sa'adat had tried to form friendships that had ultimately failed due to her differences — but at least she had tried. Still, her mother's teaching had left fingerprints in her mind, the most prominent being respect for men. Even under her ill delusion, she knew better than to truly fight him. As her strength left her, green eyes focused on the striking gold that settled amongst shades of amber and fire — he hoisted her up onto the brutish animal that was with him, his own body following. She was silent as he held her atop the horse.

The land went by faster than she could have expected on foot, the easy canter of the horse carrying the two to some destination that she had not seen and could not conceive. She was tired. It was too much for her to try and ask questions — the language wasn't there, he could understand her any more than she could understand him and trying to converse was a useless endeavor. So silence became her friend. The jackayote focused her gaze at something in the distance, her mind allowed to roam into the darkness of what world her illness had created. Her fevered mind created faces she'd seen painted on the clay-and-stone walls of the places of worship in Cairo. They were faces she knew and didn't know, but faces that came to her now despite her lack of heritage in the region. What fate would unfold in this unusual, languageless place, under the gaze of Gods she did not wholly trust.