She was different. She was distinguished by the oracles. She spoke to the gods, who descended on her in disorienting, frightening fits that made her vision blank out and caused her to fall down. As God’s Wife of Amun she had been closer to the gods than any man on earth. Except for the pharaoh. Now she would be that, too.

I... no, we walk through the forest. We are crowded in this body and made clumsy. And the whispering voice that drives me, that makes us we, has only disdain for my efforts. I was a soft belly waiting for teeth before, and that is what I still am, sharing sharp white teeth or no.