╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮

╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

Ash rose with a jolt, immediately starting to choke. Water sloshed around her as she wiped her face with her hands. Steadying her breathing, she blinked a few times to get her eyes adjusted to the harsh white lights in her bathroom. This is the second time she fell asleep in the bathtub, waking up from the dream of her dying in Cairo. She'd never even been to Cairo, so why would she die there? It didn't make sense.

Grabbing her towel, she stepped out of the tub, drying herself off. She threw on an Avatar graphic tee and some ripped jeans, stepped into some black flats, and threw her damp hair into a ponytail. Walking into her kitchen, she heard the sound of something crashing to the floor, and a man mumbling a string of curses outside her door.

Ash turned to her door, looking out of the peephole. There was a man kneeling down on the floor, scraping bits of a broken picture frame into a beaten up cardboard box. He had his phone in between his ear and his shoulder.

"Alright, Mum," he spoke into his phone. "I will call you tomorrow. Laters, gators." He hung up his phone and tucked it away in his jacket pocket. Throwing the last bits of glass into the box, the man searched his pockets for something. "Where are my keys?" He looked around on the floor of the hall, not finding his keys. "Well done, Steven. You just moved in to this flat, and you've already lost your bloody keys."

Ash shuffled her feet, feeling something clink under her shoe. She looked down, and lo and behold, a key was under her foot. A key that wasn't hers. She picked up the key and opened the door, finding the man on his knees, looking under the door.

"Hiya," the man greeted, quickly getting off of the floor. "I was just- looking for my key. I dropped it, and it might've slid under, you know?" He held his hands together. "Have you seen it? My key?"

"It look something like this?" She held out her hand, showing the key resting in her palm.

"Yes! Thank you," he reached for his key. "I'm Steven." He shook her hand.

"Ash," she said. Steven looked very familiar, but she couldn't quite put her finger on where she knew him from. "I feel like I know you from somewhere." She let go of his hand, lightly creasing her eyebrows.

"Well, if you go to the museum often," Steven shrugged, rocking on the balls of his feet. "I work there."

"Oh," Ash nodded. "I think that's it." Steven gave a friendly smile. "Nice to meet you, Steven."

"Nice to meet you," he replied back, picking up the box sitting in the floor. "Bye, neighbor."

Ash closed the door, going back to making her breakfast.

Months Later

"Mal, come on!" Del chuckled, pulling her friend to her front porch. "My dad isn't gonna bite you." The two were at Del's house for a school project on the relevance of the moon to mythology.

"Dude, I rarely want to talk to my parents, I can't meet your dad," Mal stammered, trying to pull away from Delphine.

"He doesn't talk," Del explained. "Not since he came home." She unlocked the front door. "You'll be fine. Come on." The two walked into the house and Del threw her keys into a tray at the door. "Make yourself at home."

Mal held the straps of her bag, walking behind Del. "Nice house."

"Thanks," Del said, walking to where her father was sitting on the couch. "Hey, Dad." Her father signed 'hello' to the two girls.

"Can he hear?" Mal asked. It was supposed to sound genuine, but it came out a bit condescending. "Sorry. That was probably a rude thing to ask."

"He can hear, he's just mute," Del said. She turned her attention back to her father. "This is Mal. We're working on a project."

"Hi," Mal greeted, holding her hand out for him to shake. Her father extended a bony hand to Mal, revealing a tattoo of a balance scale on his wrist. "Cool tattoo."

Delphine's father grunted, pulling his hand away quickly.

"Come on, there's a bunch of stuff we can look at upstairs," Del said. Mal walked with Delphine, noticing how her father stared at the two of them, something hidden behind those blue eyes.

"Your dad collected a lot of old junk, huh?" Mal asked, looking around at all of the artifacts in the attic. From tiny shards of a clay pot to half of a giant skull covered in sand, everything was on a shelf, on display.

"Yeah, he was an archaeologist," Del said. "He'd go all around the world and find ancient things with his crew. He doesn't do it anymore though." Her hand ran across an Egyptian drawing of a lizard woman.

"Why?" Mal asked. If she got to tour the world, even if it was to just dig up old things, she would for sure do it.

"A few years ago, his crew was attacked," Del explained. "No one else made it out but him. When he came home, he just rambled on about how he wished he could stop evil before it even happened." She sat on her heels, in front of a large clay pot with more hieroglyphs and drawings over it. "Then, he just stopped talking altogether."

"What's this?" Mal asked, eyes landing on the small figurine of the lizard woman that was on the photo Del was looking at.

"Oh, uh," Del stood up from her spot on the floor. "That is Ammit." She shuffled over to the shelf, keeping Mal from touching it. "I'm not sure what dig site he got this from, but Dad doesn't like anyone touching her."

"Egyptian gods are very odd looking," Mal commented. "They're always a hybrid of some sort of animal." She scanned another shelf, finding a papyrus of a man with the head of a bird skull. "Like this guy."

"Ooh!" Del said, pointing her finger at it. "We actually need him."

"Really?"

"Yeah, that's Khonshu. He's the god of the night and sky."

"So, this freaky bird guy controls the sky?" Mal asked, sitting down on her knees. "You know, we could've just looked this up."

"I'm a hands on learner," Del shrugged, hands running across the papyrus. "Which reminds me, the museum just opened their Egypt exhibit. Wanna check it out?"

"Uh," Mal sighed. "Yeah, sure."

Del squealed, yanking Mal off of the floor. Del slid down the railing of the stairs, throwing on her jacket at the same time. Mal never understood how she could have so much energy. She grabbed her jacket and the two headed out to the bus stop.

When they got off of the bus, Mal spotted a vendor selling waffles. She made a mental note to buy one when they were finished in the museum. The two walked up the thin steps into the museum. There were handfuls of people walking around the place, all looking at something different.

Mal looked around, intrigued. The only things she knew about old Egypt was about the Pyramids and Cleopatra. And she only knew that from the movies she watched. Del was practically bursting at the seams with excitement as she dragged Mal to every corner of the exhibit.

The two came across an old piece of paper in a glass case. It was written in Egyptian, so Mal had no idea what it said. But Del did.

"Every rebirth after their demise, the Renascents grow closer to facing Ammit, with the..." Part of the text was missing due to the paper being torn. "... Knight fueling their power."

"What's that about?," Mal asked. Del shrugged, but she couldn't help the feeling of familiarity crawl up her spine.

I'm very excited to write about Ash and Steven! Their interactions are just so wholesome, it's amazing. Also, who do you think is Del's father?