Solstice 
 
 
"It is my desire that I may hear thy voice, even on the north wind, that my limbs may be rejuvenated with life through love of thee.  
Give me thy hands, holding thy spirit, that I may receive it and may live by it.  
Call thou upon my name unto eternity, and it shall never fail." 
 
Inscription found on a tomb in the Valley of The Kings. 
 
* 
 
Wesley does not really wake, in Cairo. It is more a slow surfacing, from one state of underwater being to another, from what seems clear and real to true clarity. It took a while to get used to, this new slip from one world into another, not the instant alertness of the last few months, heart hammering and body too-awake, mind still groggily protesting at the intrusion of alarm or outside noise or simply dream-thoughts that inspired adrenaline. 
 
It is a celebration, in Old Egypt. The height of the sun, the victory of Horus, of Isis, the rising of Sirius the Dog-Star, the coming of Inundation. Illyria has been dream-walking since her journey to Abu Simbel, though she thinks they don't know, bathing in the Nile and in moonlight, her wall paintings growing smaller, richer, more detailed. She is turning inward, at last, away from the world of gods and towards the world she has never fully got used to inhabiting. Wesley knows that tonight she will begin her real farewells to her old existence, that she has made her choice and placed the barriers between her self and her former dimension firmly on the side that keeps her with them. Illyria understands ritual, understands it intrinsically where Wesley knows it by rote, understands the meaning of the beer and salt and grain, the fire and honey, and later the ash. 
 
She draws sigils on Xander, in ink and henna, with a pointed stick of sandalwood and damp woodash, with blurring charcoal and gold paint, draws them on pulse points and centres, over heart and belly and thighs. Illyria's understanding is of protection and of strength, leaves no room for compromise. Xander is hers, and in this country of divinity, she tells the gods so. 
 
Her own hands are always patterned. Wesley does not always recognise what she is saying, and sometimes, when he does, he blushes. 
 
When Spike turns over beside him, Wesley stifles a snort. Illyria has drawn on his back, come into their sleep and somehow left it unbroken, and patterned Spike's shoulders with blue dye. Wesley reads the lines, and grins. 
 
Spike is always going to hate Midsummer Eve, even though there is, eventually, sunset. Illyria has patterned dark into him, drawn the lines of Ra's journey through the Underworld over his skin. Wesley is unsure as to whether this is her idea of humour or not, but it certainly appeals to his sense of the innately ridiculous. 
 
He hastily raises a hand to his own back, feels the henna dots there, and curses. 
 
"....huh...?" Spike turns his head in bleary confusion, and Wesley just laughs, and raises a hand to the sunstone, setting it to turn amidst the reflected water. 
 
"Nothing," he whispers into the golden light. "Nothing. Just thinking." 
 
"...too fucking light..." 
 
"I know." The stars will be even brighter, for the brief hour they truly show, but Wesley doesn't mention that. "Close your eyes." 
 
When Spike just blinks crossly at him, he presses his fingertips to the smooth skin just above the slightly darkened eyelids. "Close them." 
 
He waits until he is obeyed, then smiles, and bends his head, beginning to trace out on the other side of Spike's body the lines that Illyria has sketched out in blue, does so with lips and tongue and nails, carving them with the heat of his body over collarbones and throat and chest, with the cool of air, with the sharp faint pain of a jagged thumbnail.  
 
He draws in the patterns of Horus, of the rising Nile, of the goddess Sekhmet and of blood-lust transmuted into love, the rising stars and the patterns of Nut's curved body, moves down to flicker his tongue into Spike's navel, to caress his fingers outwars in the patterns of the Third Stage, declining West, setting sun into dark, the defeat of Set and the victory of light. 
 
His own eyes are open, watching the wavering glitter of the sunstone's light pass without pain over Spike's body. 
 
He marks it all in with his fingertips, with the warmth of his mouth. Renewal and hope and light, rebirth and beginning and joy. 
 
"I love you," he murmurs, breath cool on damp skin, because he has never forgotten his vow to himself, to say the words every day, and forgets about tracery and lines and spells, to take his mouth lower and begin an older kind of ritual. 
 
*