Hunger
𓄗𓎸𓂀𓎹𓄘
Hunger.
Oh, how awfully hungry they were.
It was not merely the innate demand of the belly, nor an ache subdued with simple bread and salt, but the hollowing want that gnawed at the very sheath of their being. These men had tasted the tallow of power and now craved the very flesh of it.
She had watched them for a long time, peering from behind the curtain of their schemes. She saw their endless appetite drain the veins of the realm, leaving only pallor. She saw how much they were willing to lose, just to satisfy their tormenting hunger.
And it was this ceaseless hunger that forced their hand. 'Do not reprimand them; they acted only to be sated,' their friends, her self-incriminating foes, endlessly insisted. Their hands cupped, raised in mock prayer to the gods above. They waited, expectant of the providence they themselves had wrought.
As hungry as they were, Nitocris reasoned—why not gift them a banquet?
She paced the length of the stone-burrowed hall, her footsteps chasing her through the echo against the walls. Why omit such a reward for their strenuous work? Labour that had drawn blood and torn skin, that had split bone and left marrow exposed. They had carved their ascent with the precision of a butcher, flaying the flesh of the realm into appropriate cuts.
A feast then, ever so decadent, Nitocris mused, was in order.
Such a feast, that it would be immortalised in the humming spaces between notes of bards not yet sung. It would be told and retold in haunting whispers, long after Khnum, giver of silt, reclaimed and reshaped the very stone of the chamber where she stood.
Moisture enlivened the tips of her fingers as she dragged them along the grain of the sandstone walls. It felt alive beneath her touch, falling in hushed weepings behind the shadows of the columns.
To any other, it would have been nothing more than the inevitable dampness of a place so close to Osiris’ domain. The clinging humidity seeping from the underworld. Nitocris, however, knew better.
Lamps dimmed and flared in the wandering drafts. Shadows stretched from each chamber corner, dancing with a life not given by Shu—the bestower of breath. They threatened to reveal the fate awaiting her guests. In their movements, they mocked the stiff postures of the small shabti's—servants for the afterlife—lining the walls. How thoughtful she was to offer such gifts to those going to a place where they were scarcely needed.
Beneath her sandals, charred sage entwined with crushed rosemary, ground fine against the stone. The scent formed a shroud, curated to mask deeper notes of damp earth and mineral rot.
It was all recompense exalted.
At that thought, a name cleaved through her apathy.
Her name.
It was a voice she had scarcely considered would ever reach her again—resigned, as it was, to the echoes from the Duat, the realm where the Aten—the gold disk boring down from the sky—goes to die.
“Neiti.”
A small voice, blissfully unaware of its own absence from her reality, came forth. He was accompanied by the distant melancholy of a reed flute, playing something thin, sweet and agonisingly solemn, from beyond both space and time.
“I have come to show you that rosemary does, in fact, grow in the solitude of the hardened earth.”
She turned.
Her carefully tempered heart bruised at the warmth of a memory, shining through the wide smile of a young boy. He pressed blue-flowered stalks to her chest, hoping she would take them.
His eyes were bright, reflecting a light he would never again see, his skin bronzed by the Aten before the shadows had claimed him.
“See, my sister!” he said, his smile gleeful and all-knowing. is head tilted as he waited for the affirmations of his cleverness.
They did not come.
Instead, silence stretched between them, thick enough to drown in. Nitocris stared at his apparition, her throat tightening as though she had swallowed the very grit of the desert.
“I see,” she managed at last, her voice a ghost of the warmth it once was.
She reached out, grasping the phantom stems and leaves. Her knuckles paled, as if clutching at the memory itself.
“What is the matter, Neiti?” he asked, concern etching a small furrow between his brows. “You do not seem yourself?”
“I—”
The memory slipped away.
The boy’s face blurred like oil on water, his features running together as the logic of the living resisted the intrusion of the dead.
In truth, she remembered this moment differently. She had laughed then, warm and unburdened. She had teased the small plait by his head, which he had coaxed so eagerly into length. She had been a sister in that life, not the ghost of a woman she was now.
But here, in the suffocating dark, his memory sensed the change. He saw the shadow lodged behind her eyes, the weight of her crown, which he did not know had been bought with his very own blood.
𓄗𓎸𓂀𓎹𓄘
They were hungry, she reminded herself, turning back to the low-set table. She began the final preparations, showering petals upon the spread. Their deep velvet hues were almost contemptuous against the cold austerity of their stone surroundings.
Sumptuous grapes brimmed in silver bowls, their skin taut and glistening. Cracked pine nuts and crushed pomegranate quarters bled their tart crimson into dill-infused fish laid out with ceremonial care.
She arranged it all with the meticulous reverence of a priestess preparing an offering for the gods. Honey-glazed ducks rested with their limp heads beside aged beverages. Their lacquered skin gleamed amber in the lamplight—only the best for her famished guests.
“Look at this, Pepi,” she said softly, addressing the empty air as if the spirit of her father was present. “Cushions imported from the distant lands of Punt. They offer a soft mask of comfort, do you not think? Instruments wait for any guest who wishes to play. Tall lilies subdue the pungency of the crafted cheese.”
The chamber did not answer her. Not even a whisper of wind stirred.
“I think you would be pleased, father,” she said, her words heavy in the silence. “Only such decadence could tempt the creature of their hunger.”
These men—the high priests who had twisted the omens to suit their ambitions, the nomarchs who fed only themselves while the granaries emptied, the generals who had looked away when blades were drawn—deserved nothing less than an excess that matched their own appetite.
It was overindulgence made manifest. Silverware paired with gold chalices. Dates dipped in mint-infused honey. Every desire placed within arm’s reach. And yet, the chamber felt curiously hollow. There was no warmth nor chill. No draft nor stillness. Only the echo of what was to come.
𓄗𓎸𓂀𓎹𓄘
“Hapi reaches for the Sopdet light; that is why, they say, the waters rise,” the boy’s voice rose again, drifting forth from the shadows of a tall granite pillar.
He was reciting the lessons their tutors had drummed into them as children, back when the rising of Hapi was a celebration, not a weapon sharpened for retribution.
“Do not ail yourself so, my sister,” his apparition pleaded, stepping closer. “Hapi will reach for the skies again.”
He still did not know the cause of her affliction. Perhaps, she wagered, it was better this way. She wished least of all to injure his warmth. If his light were to go out, she feared the ember smouldering within her would vanish entirely.
And she needed that warmth. She needed it to fan the fire scorching beneath her ribs. It summoned the resolve that would brace her for the judgment her vengeance would invite. The sensation was jagged, poisonous—a joy prickling hot beneath her skin. It was better than the numbness threatening to hollow her out.
Still, they were hungry, and no ghost of a memory could nourish the living.
Heavy beads of moisture gathered along the ceiling, hanging like translucent pearls. They swelled until they couldn’t sustain their own weight. Droplets fell, tracing shimmering paths down the walls, their trails weaving their own tales of betrayal across the stone.
Nitocris pressed her palm flat against the wall. The stone was still cool, spared from the Aten’s unrelenting embrace. Set deep beneath the burning sands, the chamber had not yet absorbed the heat of the anguish that consumed her.
She could hear them now—not the guests, not yet—but the voices of the future. Pleas and lamentations, destined to be submerged beneath the eclipsing sands of time. The land would shift and reform endlessly. Nothing ever, not once, the same.
It was cruel that way. A moment lasted only as long as the winds were still—and the winds were never still for long. One could reach for it, but it would always dissipate, slipping away to the storms stirred by Sekhmet’s wrath.
Nitocris, however, believed this story would not be lost like the others. Water left a different kind of mark than wind: while wind scattered, water silted, buried, and preserved—even as it destroyed.
𓄗𓎸𓂀𓎹𓄘
“Neiti,” the boy called.
This time, she did not turn to him. Her chest lacked the strength for his absence.
“Will you take this feather,” he asked gently, “to weigh against your heart?”
She stilled. Her breath turned to mud, hardening in the base of her lungs. The image was too sharp, too sacred: The Hall of Two Truths, the scales of Ma’at, the feather gleaming against the weight of her heart.
“I fear, my dear brother,” she said, breaking the resolve not to face him, “I will not be in need of a feather.”
“Why, Neiti?”
“I do not see the spirits of Duat troubling themselves with a heart so heavy as mine will be,” she said regretfully.
Kohl coursed down the creases of her eyes as she wedged them shut, the black pigment staining her cheeks like spilled ink on papyrus. “I am meant for Ammit. I have chosen the great waste. I have chosen an end where the name Nitocris is swallowed by the dark.”
“To cease to exist?” he asked, with that terrifying innocence of the dead who have forgotten the weight of the realm she remained. “You have not the evil in your heart to cause it be heavy.”
“Not yet, little brother,” she whispered. “Soon. It is that I am to give my soul to ensure yours is uttered eternally. If I am the monster of this tale, you shall remain the martyr.”
“Why, sister?” he asked softly. “For I am still here?”
She turned her face away. She could not endure the deception of his being. Better to vanish between the jaws of Ammit, her thoughts quietened as if he might hear them, than to exist at all in a place where laughter was only an echo in a tomb.
When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
𓄗𓎸𓂀𓎹𓄘
The chamber felt thinner, hollow, as though some essential weight had been removed. Yet there, wedged upright among the blue irises and papyrus strands adorning the centrepiece, stood a tall ivory ostrich feather.
A gift.
A plea for her to choose mercy.
To choose lightness.
It was far too late. Her heart already rested with the weight of stone between her ribs.
Still, it was a piece of him to carry with her into the endless dark. She lifted the feather, her fingers trembling against her will, and tucked it into the folds of the linen at her thigh.
At the merciful sentiment of his gesture, tears gathered along her lashes, threatening siege. She would not cry. She would not give them cause for suspicion when they arrived. She would not mar the spread of delicacies with the salt of her grief.
Instead, she traced the length of the banquet one last time, reclaiming her composure. The aroma of the feast was a mirage, a beautiful lie. There was something for every palate, every indulgence to arouse even the pickiest of tongues. A bounty they would reach for but never quite grasp to keep.
Above, the Aten was transcending into Ra, climbing to the zenith of his power. It was his will to scorch the lands into submission, in the name of order.
Below, in the cool, weeping dark of the chamber, Nitocris prepared to summon Isfet, the embodiment of pure, deliberate chaos. It was her will in the name of retribution.
As Ra reached the top of his world, marked by the narrowing sliver of shadow along the hall, a deep hypnotic call ushered a name that rose from the void.
Her name.
Drawn out in a low register that vibrated through the soles of her feet. It set her blood alight, a song pulling her unchallenged toward the sluice gates.
Without hesitation, without the drag of apprehension, she followed it—down the hall and into the waiting dark.
𓄗𓎸𓂀𓎹𓄘
