Egyptian Timewave

Chapter 1

Abayomi shifts in her seat, staring out the window of the plane. The land beneath her is a dusty gold color, parched and battered by the winds. When she moves to pull the window shade down, her eyes snag on a hint of green in the distance, bright and beckoning. Her knee starts to bounce in excitement and her right hand clenches around the book in her lap.

They're going to land soon and when she steps off this plane, she will be in Egypt for the first time in her life. A hand touches her arm and Abayomi turns to look at her father, her face darkening slightly. He lets out a soft laugh at her expression.

"Relax, Abayomi. We're landing soon."

She smiles weakly and shrugs. "I can't help it. This will be my first dig here."

"It isn't going anywhere. Relax. Besides, we won't even be going to the dig site yet. That's in two days, when the digging season begins."

Abayomi frowns. "Why are we arriving now then?"

Her dad laughs. "A couple of reasons. For one, so we aren't getting up at four-thirty in the morning with jet lag, and also so you have some time to explore the city beforehand."

"Where are we staying again?"

"Luxor. We'll be pretty close to the temple."

Abayomi's eyes brighten. "Really?"

"Would I lie to you?"

Abayomi raises an eyebrow at him, a tiny smirk tugging at her lips. "Yes. You would."

She has to hold back her laugh when he backpedals. "Would I lie to you about Egypt?"

Abayomi chews on her lip, mulling over the thought. At her father's expression, she draws it out just a bit longer, for the fun of it. But she loses herself in a fit of giggles and when she recovers, admits it to him.

"No, you wouldn't."

Her father gives her another look. "Very funny, Abayomi. Read your book."

She glances out the window at the approaching smear of grin and flips open the cover of the volume in her lap. She scans over the symbols on the page, not needing to look at the translations below to know the meaning of the hieroglyphs. They are talking about one of the pharaohs, detailing his accomplishments.

It isn't a surprising bit of text, the hieroglyphs are from the pharaoh's tomb. Still, even with that bit of foreknowledge, the practice helps. Not content to end there, she sounds out some of the phrases. The words roll off her tongue easily, as they always do, but they still don't sound quite right.

It feels like there is an itch there, that she is so close to the proper pronunciation but misses it just slightly. Abayomi sighs. No matter how hard she tries, she won't be able to get it. They don't know everything about the ancient language, so it is reasonable that they don't know every detail of how it sounds.

Her own skill with learning languages isn't going to help her here, not without the assistance of someone fluent in the spoken language of ancient Egypt. And no one in the modern world has that knowledge, it didn't survive through the ages. The best they can do is use the sounds of the hieroglyphs they know to imitate what the language likely could have sounded like.

Abayomi closes the book with a grimace and looks out the window again, just in time to see the ground beneath them become fully green. The plane tilts and turns back the way they came, quickly passing back over onto the dustier land to touch down at the airport. Abayomi quickly moves to put her book back in her backpack, wanting to be moving as soon as she can.

When they get off the plane, she has to force herself to not run towards the baggage claim in excitement, not caring about the dry heat filling the airport. Something grabs onto her arm and tugs her back, forcing Abayomi to slow. When she looks back with a scowl, she finds her father to be handing something to her. The backpack. Abayomi flushes and takes it from him, slinging it onto her back.

"Thank you."

His expression softens. "Don't get so excited that you become forgetful, that isn't smart in a new place."

"Yes, Baba."

"Good. Let's go get our things, Aya."

Abayomi beams and starts walking again, her feet flying over the ground. Her backpack bounces up and down on her shoulders as she moves, propelled by the force of her footsteps. Despite not having ever been here before and so being unfamiliar with the area, it doesn't take her long to find the baggage claim, assisted both by the signs directing them and her own speed. She is already pulling their bags off the belt when her father actually manages to get through the crowd to her.

He gasps out, "Well, you certainly won't have much trouble at the dig site, Abayomi."

"Sorry, did I go too fast?"

He shakes his head. "Not to worry. Is this everything?"

Abayomi looks over the collection of bags and frowns. "There's one more. It should be coming around soon."

Indeed, she catches sight of the bag a few moments after she finishes speaking. She slips back into the crowd to intercept the bag, pulling it off the belt to swing the strap over her shoulder with a grunt. Unsurprisingly, it is her father's work bag, full of all sorts of tools for archaeological use. Abayomi folds her arm over the top of the bulky bag and wades through the crowd to get back to her father, who has pulled all their bags off to the side.

He takes his work bag from her and trades it for one of the suitcases and Abayomi's own archaeology bag. Abayomi slings her bag over her shoulder and smiles at the familiar weight of it as the bag contours itself perfectly to her the curve of her side. Her father grins at her and motions towards the doors.

"Are you ready to explore Luxor, Aya?"

Abayomi grins. "I'm more than ready, Baba!"

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Hi everyone! Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and are excited to see what has changed since the first iteration of Egyptian Timewave.

Now, ignoring anything that you might now has happened since the old version, what do you think they'll do in Luxor? For those of you who read the old version, what changes have you noticed and do you like the changes?

Off to other news. I have a discord server for my books now! The link is here, https://discord.gg/vmaPBZHeKx and I hope you'll check it out(I post snippets there!) There's also a second link(same one technically) in my about me section on my profile so you can also see it there.

See you next chapter and happy reading!

~ Goddess of Fate, signing out