Inundation 
 

 
You are here to kneel 
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more 
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation 
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. 
 
* 
 
They are running out of time, like sand or water flowing unstoppably through clenched fingers, dissipating slowly or quickly according to the hour, the day, the moment. Time is no longer caught in amber, in syrup, molasses-movement of the second hand, but rushing by faster even than the tributaries, leaving them behind. 
 
They can no longer pretend, even to themselves, that it is really spring any more. May is coming to a close, even in England the air will be changing to summer. There are hints everywhere they turn, reminders of the world, waiting for them. 
 
A phone message, blinking in the dim light of morning. They return before sunrise, and think at first of emergencies, accidents, a new apocalypse, but it is only a cheerful greeting from Dawn, who concludes by asking Wesley what she should do in the garden, which is apparently 'doing really insane flower stuff, and yeah, I think you probably need to get back soon before I kinda lose it and cut it all down, cause it's just not stopping!'. 
 
They all try not to think of the work they are probably starting to lose. Wesley's translations pay well, but it is not what they set the agency up for. The holiday becomes tinged with guilt, however hard they try not to acknowledge it or let it intrude. 
 
An e-mail from Willow, describing what Wesley knows is a summer's day, sent from somewhere in Lincolnshire. She doesn't say what she's doing there, and they all know better than to ask. If she wants to tell them, she will, if it's important, or interesting, or they need to know. Willow keeps her friendship with Xander intact, but at the cost of keeping his absolute separation from the New Council a firm line between them. Not a barrier - Willow cannot even begin to maintain such a thing - simply a line. Irrefutable, unerasable. She, too reminds them of where they belong, Giles's name dropping through her light missive like a stone in a millpond, disturbing their calm with unwanted thoughts. 
 
Giles will never trust Illyria, never accept her. He waits for the catch, for the moment of betrayal, the moment of her turning around and dropping the mask of the half-god they know to reveal the renewed slayer of millions, the annihilator, the Unconquerable. 
 
Xander, long used to defending his choices, accepts this with an odd serenity. His faith, when he chooses to give it, has always been unshakable, the opinions even of those he loves and trusts become empty words, hollow and meaningless compared to his own conviction. It is Wesley who fights this one, futilely and hard, a wall of broken stones flung up against Giles's icy, crushing disapproval. He has never been able to withstand the old, ingrained authority for long, old habits and defences weakening him, but he still tries, even knowing it to be pointless, and they love him for it. 
 
It is not only Illyria that Giles cannot bring himself to trust, but none of them ever touch on that, even Giles. It is simpler for them all to pretend that the new head of the Watcher's Council is not more inclined, now, to trust a newly souled vampire than a man who used to be one of their own.  
 
They are all getting good at passing over inconvenient facts that cannot be changed, would do no-one good to think about or discuss. 
 
Wesley was Judas in Giles's eyes long before his half-forgotten betrayal of Angel, and nothing that happens, no time that passes, will remove that deep-seated sense of mistrust. Giles does not forgive those who threaten to harm his children, and Wesley, oddly, respects that. He still carries the guilt of that time, is only now learning not to flinch at Willow's name; the girl's bright voice on the phone, asking for Xander, a reminder of how fallible he is, was, can be. No reassurance that he is a different man can convince him that the same foundations lie beneath whoever he is, whoever he becomes. 
 
He has learnt to live with it. That, above all, is what has changed. 
 
* 
 
The Nile is at its lowest point, sluggish and brown. Even Illyria will no longer swim in it. 
 
"When the floods begin," Wesley says one night, and suddenly there is a timescale, a limit, a finite number of days, and time jumps into new movement, speeding forward over hours that they somehow miss, never enough time to do all the things they meant to, and somehow didn't. 
 
They go to Luxor, and Wesley and Spike share a fleeting grin, thinking of a stolen horse. 
 
Illyria, for once, takes Xander to the temples with her, somehow breathing into him what she can see, what she knows, what she feels in the old prayers, the worn stone. 
 
He comes back as dazed as she, and whatever is happening there is almost ready to put into words, though Wesley thinks now they are more likely to be found back in LA, in the odd apartment building, in the place that is more home than their beautiful shabby little house in Cairo will ever be. 
 
"The gods are dead," Illyria says, on another evening. "And I have had my fill of prayer." She is moving forward as unstoppably as their time is running out, saying her farewells to the old lives, the old customs, the old gods. If Fred walked among heroes, the god-king who inhabits her shell walked among stars, immortals, portals, all one and the same to her, saw things they will never see or understand. 
 
Illyria came to Egypt to say goodbye, they realise, and she is leaving with less sorrow than anyone else. This was her allocated time of mourning, of relinquishing who she was, learning to wash away the bitterness of regret in the endless cycle of legend and rebirth that still holds true here.  
 
Holiday, holyday, Wesley thinks, and yes, they have managed that, found something in each day that is small and sacred, something to believe in. 
 
They pack up the house. The paintings stay on the walls, glowing reminders in deep colour of Illyria's vision. Whoever takes over the rent may keep them, or paint it over. She traces her fingers over them, and her face is serene. 
 
Xander is the one with real farewells to say, the one who has made friends, learnt customs from their source. He is surprised to realise that their regret at his leaving is genuine. 
 
Wesley strips the bedroom of all its glass, the reflected water seeming to drain out of it, the glowing light muting like sandstone in shadow, the bronze and gold turning to pale yellow, to beige, to dull stone. 
 
The last thing to be removed is the sunstone, spinning on its chain, forever caged, time and light and magic, caught forever in a shard of perfection. 
 
Spike puts the chain around his neck, and expects, for a moment, the little piece of stone to burn. But it is stone, not magic, not sun, not anything really except a glittering golden pebble in cheap wire, pretty and insubstantial. 
 
But it still glows. 
 
On the evening when they leave, the river covers the first two marks on the Nilometer. Even the high dam at Aswan cannot stop this flood, merely control it. 
 
There is still brown silt in the water, as there always has been. 
 
It rains hard, the sky heavy and dark, darker even than the time would suggest. The streets turn into streams, the windows wash out the skyline with a constant wall of water. 
 
There is nothing visible for them to say goodbye to, and that, perhaps, is as it should be. A wavering reflection only, as their memories will become - flickers of light, a glimpse of silk, photographs that hardly anyone will see. 
 
The smell of coffee, of spice, of wood smoke, of Illyria's paints.  
 
Pleasure, scent, taste and touch all wrapped into moments that felt like eternity. 
 
The clean, heavy scent of water on stone, a river reflected onto a wall, a worn bedpost. 
 
Illyria's laughter, under a desert sky, and the stars that seemed to almost visibly move with every passing minute. 
 
Spike, bleached and silvered by moonlight into something even more preternatural than the thing he is, sitting on the Sphinx's paw. 
 
Xander learning to drink scalding tea through a grass straw, mangling Arabic, telling them of the Lebanon cedars. 
 
Wesley holding papyrus scrolls, awed that he should be trusted with them, creating magic with water and light as though they were written spells. 
 
They have all found a kind of peace in Egypt, not lasting, perhaps, or something that can be held onto forever, but a fact, a piece of the past that they can refer to, a touchstone to replace the more familiar ones of grief and war and impossible odds.  
 
It is better even than victory.