There's A Fine Line Between Coincidence & Fate ✓

Chapter 36

*4 Years Later*

"Umi, Umi! Look what I can do!" My four year old son, Asir, yells to me from across the corral where we turn out the horses. There, sitting atop his father's giant stallion is my baby, riding around with no hands.

Maybe that wasn't the right way to word that, seeing as how his father was leading him around. "Please make sure he's holding onto something!" I yell over to Ardeth, who just waves me off before they continue walking around the corral.

I let out a deep sigh as I hear Rahima come up beside me. "You knew this day would come. Why deny him what has brought you and his father such joy?" She says with a small smile.

"Because I don't think I was ever put on a horse that big before I could ride on my own." I say worriedly.

"Ardeth will not let him fall. You know this."

"I do. But accidents happen." Even though the invasion and subsequent deaths of Asir and Aman were almost 5 years ago, we still felt the sting and loss from their sudden, horrible deaths ever day. It's was lead Ardeth to be... hardened, I guess is the best way to describe it.

Where before he'd be quick to make jokes, and smile, now those were rare occurrences, usually saved special for our son, and sometimes me, in the privacy of our own world. Asir, of course, knew nothing different, but I often wondered what his childhood would have been like had his uncle and grandfather not been taken from us so cruelly.

My inner musings were interrupted by his small frame crashing into my legs. "Umi! Did you see?"

I lean down and pick him up. "I did my little prince." I say, placing a kiss on his cheek, to which he squealed and tried to wipe it off. I hear a wail rock through the village and wince.

"I'm sorry Margaret, she wouldn't settle." Iliana says. I pass Asir off to Ardeth before taking our daughter, Amira, from her.

"It's ok Iliana. I'll take her from here." I give the girl a fond smile. "Were you misbehaving?" I ask her. She just giggles before placing her head into my neck as we begin the walk back to our tent.

After the struggle to get pregnant with Asir, it seemed we had no such problem when we started trying again just after his first birthday. We weren't expecting to get pregnant again so quickly, but we did and Amira was born shortly after Asir's second birthday.

We didn't make it far, though, before one of the scouts rode up to us, struggling for breath. The dark sweat that soaked the horse he was riding alerted us that he he had rode hard to get here quickly. "Chieftain, there's something going on side the ruins at Hamunaptra." He manages to get out.

Ardeth and I quickly look at each other, panic reflecting in the other's eyes. Would we never catch a break from this?

I usher the kids to Rahima's tent, briefly explaining what was going on, for as much as I knew before rushing back to my tent. "You're not going this time." Ardeth says when I enter, pausing in his packing.

"If you think, for one second, that I'm letting you leave without me again, you're sorely mistaken."

"The children-" he starts but I cut him off.

"Will be fine with your mother until we can return. This is my duty Ardeth, my very reason for existing. So you won't be going alone."

We hurried about the tent, packing our bags before going back to his mother's tent to say goodbye to the children, then racing out of the village, heading back to Hamunaptra.