GIFTED TO THE PHARAOH ||18+

The moon was full that night, big enough that I could see my own shadow running beside me.

I had been running for so long I'd stopped feeling my legs. My cream backpack kept slamming into my spine, and I gripped both straps like that would stop it. Branches whipped at my arms. My white sneakers were caked in mud to the ankle, and the hem of my light cream baggy pants was soaked and heavy against my calves. A thorn had ripped a tiny hole in my baby pink top, right through one of the white roses printed on it. I noticed and didn't care.

My phone buzzed against my hip again. I didn't need to look. It had been buzzing on and off for hours, and I knew whose name was lighting up the screen. I dug it out anyway, saw Papa, 27 missed calls, and shoved it back into my pocket with shaking fingers. Something small and hard pressed into my palm when I did. The ring. I'd pulled it off in the car and forgotten to throw it away. It was still warm from my skin. I closed my fist around it, hesitated, and then tossed it into the dark without looking to see where it landed.

I kept my mouth shut and breathed through my nose, even though my chest was screaming for more air. Every time a leaf rustled, I flinched. Twice I stopped dead with a hand pressed to a tree, listening for engines, for shouting, for anyone calling my name. Nothing. Just insects, and my heartbeat in my ears.

Then the trees opened up, and I almost ran straight past it.

A temple in the jungle? Right there in the middle of nowhere? stone steps half buried under moss, a doorway black as a mouth. I stood at the bottom with my hands on my knees, laughing a little because I couldn't help it. It was real. I had thought maybe I'd made it up, one of those places you find on an old map and never expect to see.

I went up the steps slowly, testing each one with my toe before putting my weight on it. Inside, the air was cold and smelled like wet rock. I turned on my phone flashlight and the beam shook all over the walls because my hand wouldn't stay still. It buzzed again in my palm. I pressed the side button until the screen went dark, then switched the flashlight back on and held the phone tighter.

"Okay," I said quietly, mostly to hear a voice. "Nobody's going to look for me here."

No everyone is gonna look for me. Who isn't gonna look for a run away bride.

The corridor went down and down. I kept one hand on the wall the whole way. It was rough and damp under my fingers, and I pulled them back twice when I felt something like carving and got nervous, then put them right back again.

The passage ended in a room. A hole in the ceiling let the moonlight fall straight down in a long pale line, and there was a pond. Half of it lay inside the room, and the other half slid out under an opening in the wall toward the jungle. The surface was so still I could see the whole sky in it.

I stepped closer. I crouched at the edge and stared at my face: scratched cheek, leaves stuck in my hair, kohl smudged under my eyes. I looked like someone who had run out of a life and hadn't stopped to pack properly. I rubbed under my eye with my thumb, and the smudge just got worse.

A streak of light cut across the sky in the water. I looked up. A shooting star. Bright, way too bright, and it seemed to be coming down slower than it should. I watched its reflection slide across the pond and burst into white.

My head swam.

It wasn't like standing up too fast. It was like the floor tilted and kept tilting. I grabbed at the air, found nothing, and squeezed my eyes shut. My ears rang. My stomach dropped as if I'd stepped off a stair that wasn't there.

Then it stopped, and everything went quiet.

I stayed crouched with my eyes closed for a few seconds, not brave enough to look. Then I opened them.

The room was different.

The walls were tall and smooth and covered in painted figures: the architecture shows people on it, sharp profiles, gold collars, all walking sideways in a line. Thick columns, each carved to look like bundled reeds, stood in two rows. The moon was gone from the ceiling. Torchlight, from somewhere, moved on the stone.

The pond was still there, half in the room and half out, but now it had lotus flowers on it. Pale petals, wide flat leaves, floating like they'd been placed there by hand.

I looked at them for a long moment.

Wait. Don't lotuses grow in mud?

I put my fingers into the water, and it was warm. Clear enough that I could see my hand all the way down. Even my reflection was clearly visible, my own light blue eye staring back at me as light golden blonde lose curls were falling over me shoulder.

I stood back turn on the spare new phone, that my family don't know otherwise it would be filled with missed calls after i ran away from the arrange marriage forced on me upon by my own parents.

My own parents wants to be my enemy!!! So be it.  I checked the signal again, twice and the screen only showed the time, glowing stupidly in my hand. My throat had gone completely dry. Okay i need water, it's clear anyway, i gulp it down and wet my mouth then I stood up slowly, pulled my backpack tight against my chest, and turned in a circle.

Umm...Where am I?