The last days

~GREECE~

After Marcellus retired for the night I tried to sleep as well but found that I could not. I felt as one knee deep in the Tiber one moment and being swept away the next. Marcellus and father could rationalize all they wanted, but it was inhumane. I loved Marcellus too much to hold it against him, and my coldness towards father bordered on ambivalence. Yet as I lay there upon the bed I was overcome with emotions I could not name. What would it be like in Egypt? What type of master would Pharaoh be?
As I pondered these questions a plan stole into my head like a thief in the night. I could run away, using the cover of darkness and hide out. Surely someone would take me in? They’d been only too happy to open their beds, and their bodies to me. Why not their hearts, their homes? I saw their warm smiles, comforting and inviting, and then I saw their jealous sneers when they’d come across me with another lover quite accidentally. I searched my memory for a face that had retained its warmth but found none. Suddenly I felt my brother’s point hit home like a block of stone in my stomach. The only person who wanted me was Pharaoh. I really had no other choice.

I heard old arguments between Marcellus and I sound off in the back of my mind. He’d always accused me of being callous, cruel, and making men slaves to my youthful body, but what he never touched on, what he still did not realize was that I was just as much of a slave to it as they had been. He must have imagined it to be glorious, having all those men and woman pursuing me, and buying me things to woo me. Yet it was not as easy as all that. It was draining and some nights I wanted nothing more then an empty bed to lie upon, and a deep dreamless sleep to blot out the trivialities of life.
I could never explain it to him without sounding like a spoiled brat. I knew it hurt him to hear me talk like that so eventually I stopped making excuses for myself. I became what they wanted, and needed me to be, and here’s what I had to show for it. I kicked the blankets off me in a childish rage and muttering irritably stumbled through the darkness towards Marcellus’s room. It brought back memories from my childhood, memories of awakening in a cold sweat from terrible nightmares only to see a golden glow beneath my brother’s door. He always stayed up late studying so I had no qualms about crawling into his bed and snuggling beneath the blankets. He never seemed to mind, in fact he appeared to enjoy it for a time. Until he began to snap that I was too old to be having nightmares, and why didn’t I go crawl into one of the various beds I inhabited during the daylight hours?

Tonight there was no such welcoming light. Marcellus had no reason to be wide-awake and racked with doubts. He had his notch all carved out, and as much as it pained me to do so, I had to admit that he’d earned it. I opened the door with a creak and waited for him to give some inquiry, but there was no sound, and no movement aside from the draperies, whipped up by a warm night wind. I moved closer until I could see him illuminated slightly beneath the moon. He was bare-chested and his collarbones were dappled with beads of sweat. I smiled to myself. Marcellus was such a worrisome man.
Catching this glimpse of my brother allowed me to consider the troubles and fears he must be facing. Suddenly mine didn’t seem half as bad and finally I felt sleep stealing in upon me.
When Id returned to bed I made an offering to my long lost Apollo and asked for his aid.
Behind my closing eyelids I saw flashes of vast sand dunes, towering golden pyramids stark against the sky, and briefly a young dark haired girl, head down turned as she gazed into a wide river. A voice in my head informed me that this was the river Nile. Then suddenly she looked up and I caught the sparkle of the bluest eyes, so blue they rivaled the waters of the Aegean and palest skin. Pharaoh, sounded my mind and then I was gone.