Chapter 4: First Girlfriend Meets Second Girlfriend

“Hey! What’s going on here?” Chloe demanded.

Elise’s hands flew up like an angry, jilted lover pulled a gun on her. She returned to normal and was very confused.

The woman took a step back and eyed Chloe with curiosity. “Such a strange garb. I must have been sealed for some time.” She turned to Elise and examined her. Then she noted the look of confusion and realized the truth. “I see. Your soul was reborn, yet your memories sleep in shadows.” She gently caressed Elise’s cheek. “I am content in knowing I yet live within your heart, as you live in mine. Our love has transcended lifetimes.”

“I am Pharaoh Neferu, and you are my royal guard and beloved Ahneith,” she introduced herself.

“No, that’s Elise, and she’s my girlfriend,” Chloe interjected and pulled Neferu away from her.

Neferu’s eyes narrowed. “She was mine in her previous life, as she is mine now. This is why she came here despite not completely remembering me.”

“Yeah, argue all you want, Elise is my girlfriend, and I’m not sharing.”

“Let’s argue about this later, please,” Elise said. She handed Neferu the sekhem scepter, the last order her soul gave. “We need to get out of here before the police arrive.”

Chloe sighed and pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. “I already sent a text to the S.P.D. before we started fighting. It’s a government agency dedicated to hunting evil forces, like the two we just fought.”

Elise panicked. “Wait! I don’t want them to put me on one of those metal slabs like at Area 51!”

Chloe briefly laughed. “Honey, you’ll be fine; you didn’t break any laws.” That didn’t calm Elise down one bit, so she relented. “Okay, you can take…this one…with you back home. I’ll leave you two out of my report until we can figure this out.”

“Thank you!” Elise quickly embraced Chloe and kissed her cheek. She pulled herself away and grabbed Neferu’s hand to lead her out. “By the way, we’re talking about you being some magical secret agent later.”

Chloe gave her a weak smile. “Yep, I’ll give you a full disclosure the first chance I get. Promise.”

Neferu looked around while Elise led her outside. “How long have I been sealed away, beloved?”

“The Egyptologists said the artifacts date back at least four thousand years.”

A wave of sadness struck Neferu. “I see.”

They ran outside, giving Neferu a chance to see the modern landscape. Concrete pavement, buildings made of metal, and a darkened sky with only a few sparse stars to see. She followed Elise to the car and posed another question. “I see the chariots have changed in those four thousand years.”

“Yeah! No horses, and they go even faster.” Elise tossed her stolen, or perhaps recovered, weaponry into the back seat and opened the passenger’s door. “Get in!”

Elise buckled Neferu’s seatbelt, strapped herself in, and sped away from the crime scene. “Hey, can you turn the car invisible like I did before?”

Neferu was dazzled by the car. “Of course.” She placed her hand on the window and cast the same spell, though without having to speak an incantation. “It is a simple spell that I taught you myself, only a day after my father’s priest Khamun taught me.” She turned to Elise and sadly smiled. “You may not remember this now, but I am confident you will remember everything. Until you do, I will answer any and every question you may have.”

Elise kept her eyes on the road as she spoke. “Great, because I have a ton of them. I never took martial arts classes with my brothers, but I can suddenly take on a crazy woman with daggers and her boss.”

Neferu lightly chuckled and sat back in her seat. “Indeed, it must be very confusing.”

“Still, a part of me is telling me to trust you. I just don’t like not knowing why. It feels like I’m not me anymore.”

“My dear, you are you, and no one, not even the gods, may change that. These are simply instincts from another life, a message from across millennia.”

Elise continued to swerve around traffic and dodge through red lights on the way back to her apartment. She parked in front and helped Neferu out of the car.

“Is this…your palace?” It was a nice neighborhood, but far too humble for her soulmate.

“Uh…no,” she pointed to her door. “Just that two-bedroom apartment, stuck between the inconsiderate neighbors who scream at all hours of the night and steal our circulars.” She grabbed her equipment from the back seat and the leftovers from the truck before she could forget. “Hey, could you carry this while I unlock the door?”

“Very well.” She held the box of food and followed behind Else. Their apartment reminded her of a peasant’s hovel, but she kept her opinions to herself.

“Okay, are you hungry? Thirsty? We have some chips, an unfair amount of a ten-foot sandwich, general cheap hors d'oeuvres, oh, and some leftover pizza.”

“I must rely on your suggestions, Ahneith.” Neferu clearly had never heard of any of that before.

“Oh, right. Leftover pizza and soda it is. It’d be an insult to my Italian heritage if I served anything but that to an ancient pharaoh. Just take a seat over there while I get it ready.”

Elise served Neferu a plate of warm pizza and a cup of cold soda. She sat beside her guest and turned the TV on. “This is a good one. She tries to date two girls in one night without either of them discovering she's two-timing them. Honestly, Rachel deserves what’s coming to her.”

“What is this magic box?” Neferu inquired, mimicking how Elise ate her pizza.

“Uh, put quickly, we harnessed lightning as a source of power for our homes. Teams of people record people and sounds using cameras to project what they see anywhere in the world for our entertainment.”

“Ah, I see. We had similar spells in Egypt, but they were used for information gathering.” She sipped her drink and immediately recoiled. “Gods, this drink bites the drinker? How strange.” She finished the rest of the cup in one move. “Victory is mine. The drink’s bite was unable to fell me,” she boasted, earning laughter from them both. “This pizza is a true delicacy as well. The marvels of your time never cease to amaze me.”

Elise smiled and refilled her cup. “Yep, this is the peak of human civilization: leftover pizza and rom-coms.”

Neferu continued to watch the TV series. “Ahneith, where are we? This is not Egypt, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” She took her phone out of her pocket and brought up a world map. “Here’s Egypt, and here’s where we are, Boston, Massachusetts, a city in the United States of America.”

Neferu took the phone and manipulated the screen as Elise had shown. “A world away. My tablet should have been well-hidden in Cairo.”

“A lot of countries raided Egypt after your time. Rome, France, Germany, England. Especially England. The Valley of the Kings was hit especially hard.”

Neferu was horrified. “What has happened to our home?”

Elise was quick to assure her. “Egypt is still there. It’s fine! There’s just no pharaoh in charge. It’s complicated.”

Neferu sighed. “Politics has always been complicated.” She then smiled. “Egypt will always have a pharaoh, a child of the gods to guard and command the mysteries that protect our home and people.”