Mother sits, cross-legged, in reflection. Time and time she sits in this position, on this carpet. The clay walls of the house stuff in the heat. She is hot even when she is not sweating. She is tired even when she is not washing the dishes or fending away goats from entering the home. She puts on a face when she is entertaining the neighbours, she tries to look her most presentable when she goes to the well for water or buys meat from the vendors, but in fact she is exhausted.
Her heart is on the scale. Her heart is in her body but her heart is also on the scale. The poles of the scale are black, held together by ropes thicker than sand. Anubis stares from above. Anubis has the body of a man but the head of a canine. He sets Mother’s heart on one side and a feather on the other. His eyes are calm. Mother knows this he has done this for millennia. She has stood on trial herself time and time again, flagellating herself with fury and frustration, for every time the heart weighs heavier than the feather, and she is back in Duat.
Today is a little different. It is not that she expects the feather to outweigh the heart, but she has felt for the first time that her trials will come to an end. This is because the anger which has driven her is starting to fatigue her. There is a time to be angry as it fulfils a need. Often to keep oneself angry is a way to keep oneself rooted to the mission that gives one’s life meaning.
But Mother has been angry for years and it has provided her nothing.
There is no longer flame, there is no longer the ravaging.
There is only the scale, and it is waiting.
There is a reason why Mother keeps being regurgitated out of the crocodile mouth of Ammit.
She believes she is meant to be in Duat, whereas all this time her purpose belongs to the land of the living.
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