The Mummy

Halima Rahal

It's been a little while since our heroes rescued a reawakened mummy from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's Egyptian exhibit. Once she was escorted out by Serafine, Grace, Pan and Riley, the former three got her to the good Father's church where he allowed her to stay in the rectory for the time being. The woman--Halima Rahal is how she identified herself--has taken the time in the meantime to shake off the last sixty years that she lay at rest. She has managed to secure clothes in the form of a purple dress and matching tweed jacket-like top that doesn't stand out too much in the church. Halima has largely stayed within the confines of the rectory for now though, as she becomes acclimated to the world that she has woken up to.

This is where Serafine and Grace find her. She has managed somehow to acquire books and newspapers to catch up on the last sixty years of history, particularly regarding her home country but also America, where she finds herself now. She sits at a table, her dark hair pulled back and over one shoulder as she reads about recent events in Egypt with a frown of concern. It is her home, after all, whether she is a thousands year-old Egyptian or a museum researcher who has been missing for the last sixty years.

Serafíne

The rectory has a surreal familiarity for Sera. The worn floorboards, the short, narrow hallways. The untouched-since-1972 kitchen where the bachelor priest boils water for tea and stores the goodies the women of his parish bring him so regularly. Pan is absent - at the Church offices, perhaps - but Sera must either have permission or perhaps she is just brazen enough to walk through the unlocked doors without asking.

"You been here before?" Sera asks Grace as she catches the screen door and opens it; opens, too, the interior door which is - Grace may note - unlocked. A plain foyer and living room, with only religious art and worn furnishings. A blanket folded neatly over the spine of the couch, which Sera has had spread over her more than one late and aching night. The familiar scent, which she inhales.

Sera does not dress in any way that Pan's congregation might find respectable and most must surely assume that she is a prostitute or something similar. More than a few go further in their assumptions, but she has not been around as often as late so perhaps some of those rumors have faded. Regardless, Grace will surely note how familiar Sera - anything but the religious sort - is with the space. "Kitchen's back through here."

So it is.

That's where they find Halima; in the kitchen, at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper.

Pan's not here to put water on for tea but Sera at least knows where he keeps the bottled water. Opens the fridge and grabs one for herself and maybe Grace, then circles to the kitchen table.

Grace

[Perception + Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Grace

"Nope, can't say I make a habit of breaking into Pan's house," Grace says. She's been to the church just once. And then there was tacos or something -- hard to remember. It was as freaky then as it is now, all bright with Pan's luminous resonance -- one Grace finds akin to standing in a prison courtyard at night staring down the searchlight.

Going into the rectory without Pan here feels like a trespassing to her, especially with that judgey brightness. But it's not like they don't have reason, and it's not like Pan's going to mind.

They stroll together into the kitchen, and find Halima reading a (nearly dead media) newspaper. Of course Pan wouldn't have a computer for her to borrow, and of course Halima might end up worse at using them than even he.

"Halima, hello. It's good to see you again. Nice dress," Grace says, and not really because she likes the dress. Just that it is clothing, which is a change for the better.

Halima Rahal

[[Halima Per+Aware!]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Halima Rahal

She already sensed them when they were approaching, but she doesn't look up until they've actually come into the kitchen. Halima carries her own sense of Resonance, it is worth noting. It is sense of eternity, as if it was frozen in place in the blink of an eye. They also get a slight sense that may be unnerving (or may not)..that chilling of Jhor. It's barely there, as if it's just on the verge of fading completely away. But they can still pick up on it.

She smiles when she sees the two mages, sets down the newspaper. "Good day. And thank you," she says to Grace with a little nod. Faint amusement, as if she understands. She knows it's not normal for people to just walk around fully naked, after all, and she has a sense of propriety, even if it didn't bother her so much at the time. "Sera, yes? And Grace, if I recall correctly. I'm pleased to see you both. I did not get a chance to thank you properly in the chaos of our escape from the museum. I owe you both, and your friend Father Echeverria, a great debt. I do not know what may have happened if I had been caught by someone else."

Serafíne

"You'd probably've been arrested and imprisoned, or maybe locked up in a mental facility or - "

See, people say I don't know what would've happened about the things they do not wish to imagine; or the things they refuse to imagine. On some level, though, Sera must believe that Halima intends to ask herself - perhaps has already interrogated herself - on 'what would have happened' had they all not somehow felt the surging change in pattern, the reassertion of LIFE LIFE LIFE and all its consequences, somewhere way upstairs.

"You know when we felt that from downstairs we thought you were a fucking dinosaur. But seriously, what the actual fuck. How did you become a mummy?"

Grace

"Riley's also one to thank, you know. She got you out of there," Grace says, sticking up for her Traditionmate in absentia.

She walks over to the kitchen table to inspect the back of Halima's newspaper, curious over what the time-lost woman has been reading about. And, still reading, she echoes Sera. "Yes, how did that happen? Was it something like fake-death on a timer? Wake me up in fifty years?"

Grace stands up straight again, looks at the wall. "I suppose I could see why someone might want to do that."

Halima Rahal

[Closing Tag]

Halima Rahal

"Yes, very possibly," she says in agreement with Serafine's assessment of what may have happened. "Or worse. I am sure that you know, there are things out there that have no problem believing in such things as me, or you, but would not be so welcoming." Yes, she does indeed know the possibilities of what may have happened. It's just which of them that it would have come down to.

There is a fain smile that lights on the woman's face when Sera asks, and Grace echoes, the question of how she ended up in that spot. It's a valid question. I mean, come on. You don't end up spending sixty years in a sarcophagus and then just wake up, borrow a shirt to wear as a skirt and skip away without some very valid curiosities being arisen. Halima leans into the table, interlaces her fingers and sets her hand on the surface, shaking her head to Grace's thought of the timed fake-death.

"No, that's not it. Or, I suppose, not entirely." She pauses there, lets out a breath. There's no annoyance or the like; just prepping herself to explain. It's a difficult thing to do in her situation. "I am...two people, essentially. Part of me--most of me, at least consciously in my mind--is Halima Rahal. I was an expert in anthropology and Egyptology, which led to my employment at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. I grew up as normal, I had a sister and a mother and father. No...significant other, I understand the term is now.

"That was where I met Amunet," she continues. "Amunet is my tem-akh...the spirit that completes me. Many years ago, Osiris warred with his brother Sutekh in what is now called Egypt. When Sutekh killed Osiris through treachery, his son Horus used the Spell of Life to create the Shemsu-Hero. Those loyal to him, undying, who could aid in the struggle. This struggle continued for millenia, until what we call the dja-akh, the ghost storm, ravaged the Underworld and tore us apart. We were forced to find new bodies...new hosts. Amunet found me."

It's strange, the way that she's talking, of course. She refers to both parts in the third person, sometimes the first. She even knows it's strange, but it's the way that it works. "Unfortunately, she did not find me for long before the agents of Sutekh did. We were not quite strong enough yet to repel them, and they destroyed my body. Drained it to look like a preserved corpse, thousands of years old, and sealed it away. It is difficult to destroy us. I was trapped in the underworld for some time, while my body become ready and my soul regained its strength. And then it was time and I came forth." She smiles. "When you found me."

Serafíne

int + occult

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Sera listens as Halima unfolds her story; listens closely and as carefully as she can, which is not perhaps as carefully as one might wish. The creature is sitting in one of Pan's kitchen chairs with a bottle of water in one hand and she doesn't understand a thing Halima is telling her, knows she is not going to get one single piece of the story right, and Amunet and Horus and Spell of Life and what the fuck?

See, Sera cannot hide anything and does not bother to hide anything because why the hell would she hide anything, so there's a sort of polite interest/concern because she is genuinely interested/concerned but also Halima is so matter-of-fact that Sera is not swept away in a tide of emotion and also Sera is sure that none of this will make sense to her,

except some of it does. The names. The names of the gods.

Which she interprets, and interprets, and interprets, a narrow line stitching itself between her brows.

"So like. Basically, you have these enemies who worship Set, and like. They tried to kill you but didn't kill you, they just put you to sleep? Then your avatar woke you up again, somehow. Will they be able to find out that you've come back?

"Will they come looking for you?

"What - what do you plan to do next?

"What can we do to help?"

Grace

[Int + Academics = What are those words, Halima?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Grace

Grace has heard the mythology of Horus and Osiris and Sutekh. It's pretty much all about how Horus and Sutekh had a 'who can be the biggest dick' war with each other. Horus, the smart one, once challenged the evil dude to a boat race, only the boats had to be made of stone. He painted his normal boat to look like rock and won.

And that's not even to speak of the time when Horus wanked it on Sutekh's lunch, so that when the gods challenged them to figure out who had fucked who, his semen would be found in the right place. Oh, the stories...

But yes, the real story, the one everyone knows (who knows of Sutekh and Osiris and Horus and Isis anyway) is the one where Sutekh killed Osiris and scattered the pieces of his body. Isis put the body back together minus a cock (because they had to have some pathos in there somewhere) so she made him a new one, and raised him from the dead.

"Why would anybody worship Sutekh? He's like the Egyptian pantheon's loser supreme. I mean, who worships a guy who gets tricked all the time?" Grace says, trying to choose sides for Halima's sake. To be honest, though, she thinks them stories. Perhaps stories based on some truth. Perhaps there were people like herself alive back in those days who could very well put the pieces of someone back together and raise them from the dead. She doesn't deny that. But that they were gods?

And the Underworld...

"If they come looking for her, apparently what we need to do is challenge them to a concrete boat race. Engineering isn't their strong point."