Around 1700 BCE

A single pillar of basalt stood alone at the top of the Moon's Temple. The sun god sank rapidly in the west returning to his slumber in the underworld with the thin cup of the moon following. Drums echoed from between the pillars of the temple entrance. A large red-furred bipedal wolf-beast wearing a linen kilt called a shendyt, flicked a fly from his ear as he waited. He raised his lip to reveal his fangs as the golden disk vanished, showing his distaste for the father of the pharaohs. Lowering himself to one knee, Khonsu-et raised his head and howled in worship to Khons the Moon. The drums ceased as hundreds of howls answered. The sound of the city preparing for the night stopped as the chorus echoed until the moon vanished below the horizon. The wafting wisps of temple incense rose in ghostly tendrils skyward. The red wolf rose to look at the pillar, watching as cracks appeared in the dark stone. The flakes of thin rock showered him as the creature within emerged. The stone-skinned lord of the night sky stretched his wings with a bellowing yawn that sounded more like a roar.

Khonsu-et bowed his large red wolf head before he shrank into his man-form. "Lord Obion, while you slept a messenger brought news from Wase; Queen Pharoah Sobekneferu, daughter of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, is dead."

The fearsome beast melted into a tall, dark-skinned male, as his wings wrapped around his waist like a long shendyt. "And who is her successor?"

Grinning, Khonsu-et revealed, "General Khutawyre Wegaf, a son of Wepwawet." The young warrior priest stepped forward and held out his hand. "The three years of attacks is over. There will be peace for the children of the wolf and the followers of the moon."

Obion reached out to catch his wrist. "My beloved."

In the darkness of the moonless night, they kissed, but this was not the kiss of two who feared it would be their last as every kiss before had been; it was a kiss imbued with the hope of a long and peaceful future that led to more.

Near dawn, Khonsu-et woke to the scent of boiled grains, baked bread, onions, garlic, and charred, rare duck with roasted Doum palm dates. Obion carried in a tray. Through the linen curtain around the bed, he watched his lover while laying out the meal.

"I know you're awake, I can hear your heartbeat," Obion announced softly. "Come and eat."

"You are very good to me."

"How can I not be... You are good to me." Obion gestured, "Bring the drinks."

Chuckling, Khonsu-et rose and tied back his dark red corded hair. He went to get hot water for the tea for Obion and a jar of bouza, fermented barley and water, for himself from the small kitchen. As they ate, Obion looked at him closely.

"Are you healed from the last attack?"

"Yes, but you had me worried when you turned to stone," Khonsu-et confessed. "I was afraid. You were stone longer this time."

"Several of the obsidian arrowheads contained a mineral of hexagonal green crystals... Thank you for digging them out before I petrified." Obion looked at the basket of the Wase arrowheads sitting on a shelf, he could smell the poison they contained. "I must find where the southern kingdom is getting the obsidian for these. My people are as weak to the green gemstones as yours are to Chaldean silver."

"If they have blades that can cut your stone skin, perhaps you should wear a Nemes head piece of metal plates, and wide Wesekh neck guard into battle as I do."

"I am a stone skinned one, I have no need of such adornments." His arrogance was in his voice.

"Evidently, you do," Khonsu-et refuted him.

When Obion scoffed at the idea, Khonsu-et begged, "Please. I do not wish to fill your tomb."

"Don't you need to go and burn incense, priest?" Obion asked in annoyance.

Sighing, Khonsu-et rose and donned his robe. "Stay out of the sun today. I will be coming back to sleep before midday so I may rest before the dark of the moon prayers tonight. We are not done talking about this." He went to a woven chest by the bed and took out a giant Nemes and Wesekh. "They are already made. I never want to see you laying helpless and in pain like that again." Picking up the last roasted Doum, he left.

Resisting the urge to fling them across the room, he picked up the Nemes. He could smell that Khonsu-et had personally sewn the metal plates onto the cloth. The Wesekh was beaded and tied tightly enough it would not allow an arrow to pass through it, just like the one she made for Khonsu-et. He growled jealously. Rising, he grabbed his heavy woolen, hooded cloak, and the Wesekh, then spread his wings and flew to the Temple of Wepwawet. Landing at the top, he was surprised to see the high priestess oracle sitting on the roof, next to a large flat dish of water. Incense rose from burners and seemed to wrap her in ghostly chains. In her thin linen gown, round with her pregnancy, even one inclined as he was, could see her beauty.

"Khons has a message for you." Iddoferu looked from the water toward him with glowing eyes, "You who are called the stone snake, Obion, will become Ouroboros. You will make a bargain with his Deva for a boon and be cursed. The same cycle of love and loss over and over. You will become a snake that consumes his tail until the end of your kind or its new beginning." She leaned forward and collapsed over her pregnant belly, then slumped to the side.

He moved quickly to catch her before she could hit her head, then lifted her heavily pregnant body slowly. It drove him almost mad with jealousy to smell his beloved's blood mixed with his mate's in the child she carried. The priestess oracle rejected Khonsu-et when they were young, because the oracles were bound to the father of all wolves and the moon. Their mate was required to give them a child to be raised in the temples as Khonsu-et and Iddoferu were.

Looking toward the lightening horizon, Obion carried her inside. The priestesses scattered before the giant, winged male. He followed his nose to her room. An acolyte rushed in and bowed to him, then unrolled the bed pad.

He looked at the thinness of it, then demanded, "Bring another one, she is too heavy with child to sleep comfortably on a single layer." Wordlessly, she bowed and brought another back and rolled it out. He laid Iddoferu down then knelt by her bed to wait for her to wake.

Before the sun cleared the view of the river delta, she stirred. "Lord Obion? I had a vision for you."

"So you told me," he announced in a deep, droll tone.

She smiled when she saw what he was holding. "Does it fit?"

Holding the Wesekh out, he dropped it on the bed as he growled at her. "I am a stone skinned one. I do not need..."

"But you do." She rose and gulped the water by the bed before snarling back at him. "You were stone for a full moon because you did not heed my warning. Gray and green, glassy sheen, arrows made to fly and sting like wasps from the sky." She flung the small clay cup at him and it shattered against his raised wing. "I won't let you die and hurt him!" Picking up the Wesekh, she held it out to him. "Put it on the next time you go into battle, or you will lose him forever with your death."

"Why do you care?" Obion bellowed at her. "You rejected him."

"It is because I rejected him that I am so desperate to save you from your arrogance. Your stone skin won't always protect you," Iddoferu snapped, then she gasped, panting as she pressed on her side. When the contraction passed, she looked at him with tears running streaks of koal down her cheeks. "Please, he loves you. He will always love you."

"How do you know? He always comes back to you."

"Not to stay," she revealed then announced, "I got the boon I asked for."

"What boon?"

"That he will have someone who will love only him forever." She approached him slowly with the Wesekh. Pulling the pins, she placed it around his neck before securing it. It fit perfectly and allowed for room for his body to expand when he became his war fighting form. "Please, don't leave him before he leaves you; he will always come back to you, but if you die, you cannot return to him. The stone skinned ones have no Deva to return them to this world."

"You make no sense female. Speak plainly!"

"Iddoferu! Lord Obion!" Khonsu-et rushed into her room breathlessly. Seeing the shattered pottery, he panted out, "What... are... you... fighting... about?"

"Nothing," she answered as Obion added, "That I understand. She makes no sense."

"Oracle, what did you see?" Khonsu-et demanded as he gathered the broken pottery and threw it in a woven basket.

"You know I cannot tell you... Ask him. Now go back to your temple and take your stone snake with you. Rest. You have a long night ahead of you," dismissing them, she smiled sadly at her rejected mate's incredulous look.

Khonsu-et growled as he remembered it was his turn to keep the children devoted to the temples, so he tugged at Obion's arm with one hand, while he picked up the heavy cloak with the other hand. "Let us leave."

Walking quickly through the streets as the sun rose, Obion hissed in pain as the sun touched his exposed feet. Inside the Temple of Khons once again, Khonsu-et bent to examine Obion's feet.

"We must find a way to protect you from the sun's light since you cannot walk in the day as your sister can."

"In my grandfather's memories, there was a thin paste that protected the wearer from the part of sunlight which harms my kind, but I do not know what it was actually made of," Obion revealed as they continued on to their rooms below the temple. "I hate that only the queens can remember everything they see in blood memories, and I can only see flashes or what is shared with me."

"Perhaps we should go see your sister. I would like to meet her."

"She expects me to return with an egg." Obion looked down at Khonsu-et with affection. "But I have no desire to pander to any queen when I have you."

"Do you not want a child?"

"Protecting your child and your lineage is all I need," Obion revealed as he hung his cloak. Sitting down, he began to rub oil into his sunburned feet.

Khonsu-et ran his fingers over the broad Wesekh. "What did my mate say to you?"

"She begged me not to die before you and said I would be offered a boon by your Deva that was a curse. She said I will become like a snake consuming its tail." Obion shook his head then demanded, "Must she always talk in riddles?"

"It is the way of the oracles, and she has talked that way since we were little children. Every statement followed by one that sounds like it means the opposite." Khonsu-et shrugged as he poured himself a cooled cup of bouza. "Forget my crazy mate, she will give us a child, I will give her another child to keep, and then we can be happy without her."

"Was it her idea to make me a Wasekh and Nemes?"

"She made the Wasekh while you were stone. I made the Nemes to go with it... I don't want to lose you." Khonsu-et admitted as he took the pins from the protective neck piece and removed it.

Obion hugged him, vowing, "You will never lose me, I will fight the Devas if I have to, to keep you safe."

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Rewriting this for the 2024 #85K90
We are starting with Ouroboros' origins.