Menopheste
Because my father is a famous warrior, I am also elevated in our society. Because I am a woman, I am elevated to serve our Queen.
She is fearsome and she is feared. But she likes me, and treats me well. She clothes me in her own raiment. She teaches me knowledge that secures women a place in our world. This knowledge is that of healing. Or of not healing. Or, as it often happens, of making sick. Of killing.
This knowledge ensures our lifestyle; our wealth. The respect we receive as our due course from men. Even if we must cow them to receive this respect.
I work hard. I am a quick learner. She appreciates me. I do everything I can to stay in her good graces. I rise early, I retire late, all in the service of her.
When she dies, I must attend her, along with seventy other young women who had served her while she lived.
I wish to live. I attempt to escape the tomb of the attendants, but am captured and returned to her enormous and labyrinthine burial chambers.
I am given the honor of being the attendant who personally waits on the dead Queen in her funeral chamber. When the cup of poison is brought to me in ceremony, I drink it without choking on its bitter and deadly contents. This is my next to last difficult act in the service of her.
The last difficult act is the dying itself. Although a debilitating lethargy steals over me after I drink my cup, the agony in my belly is fierce and prolonged. Tears course down my paralyzed face for full minutes before blissful unconsciousness descends. I realize with an emotion that is not joy, but rather something sharper and more unpleasant, that I now have attendants who wipe my face dry and reapply my heavy cosmetics. I have these attendants but briefly.
I see my father in the company that attends the funeral ceremony. He is dry-eyed and proud, a warrior to the last.
If he wishes to help me, to save me, there is no vestige of such a desire in his visage.
I try to reach out to him, to beg him to save me, but the poison has robbed me of power over my limbs, and over my tongue.
I pass.
