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She was born in the deluge and the flood.
For a time, all she knew was the rhythm of the rain, the swishing of floodwaters, and the deep, slow heartbeat of geologic time. The sun came, the earth warmed, her banks dried. The winds blew, the air cooled, the world grew green and lush again.
There was stone and sand, reed and palm, wind and water, and she was sung to sleep by the lullaby of the world.
--
The fish had started walking.
She hadn't paid much attention to the small darting creatures that had swum along her length. Nor had she cared when they had begun crawling on her shores. But they had grown larger when she had been distracted by the changing rainfall of her tributaries, and now they could reach to eat from the tops of her trees.
She studied them. Some were still small and darting, much like the fish they had once been. Some were large and lumbering, only interested in stretching to reach the highest leaves.
She wondered if she could take one of their forms for a time, perhaps for one or two of her own heartbeats, measured in rainfall and floodwaters. One of her upstream lakes had chosen to become a large fish a few heartbeats before, though apparently that had quickly become boring, as her sister had sunk back into her lake before long.
There was such variety in these creatures, though, that she doubted taking their myriad forms could ever become dull.
As she contemplated their forms, however, another of the walking fish appeared, this one with large, sharpened teeth and a hunger in its eyes.
She fell back into the cradle of her river and decided that legs would have been too much trouble, anyway.
--
The walking fish were back. Though, as she puzzled at them, that no longer seemed quite right.
The fish-like creatures from before had been covered in scales and feathers and spoken to each other in low rumbles and twittering chirps. There had been a great flash of light, though, the earth had trembled, the sky had darkened, and soon all the walking fish had gone. The heartbeat of the world had continued steadily on without them.
These weren't the same. They were smooth, with black hair on their heads and skin as dark as the silt on her banks. They didn't abandon each other or cling to branches, instead nesting on the ground and working together as a group, like a school of fish.
They didn't eat the leaves from her trees, but pulled the fruit down and ate that instead. They plucked the reeds from her shore and tangled them together until they made coverings for their bodies during the day and the ground at night. They pulled fish from her waters and stole the seeds from wild grasses.
She watched them in fascination.
They spoke in fast-paced chittering, and over time, as they educated their young, she also learned to understand their tongue. She learned blanket and bounty and family and home and every year they rode the waves of her floods, adapting with the season and the rhythmic turn of the earth.
--
The first time she took their form, it was to save one of their young, their children. The mother was barely grown herself and had set down her child for a moment to see to the harvest of a date tree. The babe had splashed into the water with delight.
The crocodiles along her river had eaten children before and no doubt would eat children again. Life came and went; it was the song of time. She didn't know what made this child different.
Maybe it was that she had watched his birth on her banks, had watched him grow, had watched him take his first wobbly step. Maybe it was that she had watched his mother's birth and life and she could not bear to watch her heart break today.
Whatever it was, she forced her self into form and took a step, toes sinking into soft silt and her river falling from her hair. She reached down for the child and pulled him to her, feeling the warmth of his skin against hers, the quickness of his heartbeat compared to the slow beat of time she was accustomed to. The crocodile lurking under the surface knew her and slid back down into deeper waters to find easier prey.
She stepped out of the water and felt the solidity of the earth beneath her. The mother did not turn from the tree, all sounds of water blending together to her ear.
She took a breath and felt the air in her lungs for the first time. "You should be more careful, Tiye. The crocodiles are always around."
She had learned their tongue by sound, not practice, but it seemed her meaning was clear. The woman spun around, her basket of dates falling to the ground.
"Kheti!" she cried, reaching out and scooping the boy from her arms. "Are you all right?" she asked him, clutching him tightly to her and skimming her hands over his skin, searching for injury.
Tiye met her gaze. "Thank you," she said sincerely. The light shone in her eyes and off her hair. Tiye's regard grew thoughtful. "Who are you?"
She hadn't expected the question, and it startled her. She looked down at her hands and saw the ends of her fingers rippled with skin left too long in water. "I am--" the deluge, the flood, the waters, the river, the current of life, the rhythm of time, the heartbeat of the sea, I am-- "she who cradles life on her shores."
Tiye's face showed her confusion. She opened her mouth, but didn't get a chance to speak.
She nodded at the young mother before taking one step back, then another, and sinking back into her river, leaving Tiye and her son behind, though not before catching a glimpse of Tiye's mouth gaping in surprise, her eyes widening as she watched her vanish.
She felt her own mouth twist into a smile before it dissolved and she was only river once more.
--
Ar-barkit, they called him. River-blessed.
That did not save him years later when the rain came and her floodwaters rose, taking with them Kheti's young grandson.
After all, nothing lasts forever in the rhythm of the earth, not even the favor of a river.
--
They watched her rhythms, watched her rise and fall with the rain and the flood. They plotted their lives around her own heartbeat, using her silt and their stolen seeds to grow and create themselves, to cultivate.
She watched as they attempted to wrest control of their harvests from the indifferent earth. Watched as they succeeded. Watched as they began to build villages and then towns and then cities. Watched as they fought and fractured and conquered and bled.
They brought their babies to her for blessing. They brought some of her own bounty back to her waters as a gift in thankfulness for her generosity. They worshipped her flood and the life that it gave them.
She was Hapi and Iteru and Kiyira, Áman Dawū, Lilu, Aiguptos, and Neilos. In their new tongue, her people called her en-Nīl and those across the sea called her Nilus in their own.
Yes, she thought. Nile will do nicely.
--
They cluttered at her shores and chittered at each other about trade and commerce. They took her trees and created boats and ships to ride her floodwaters in truth. They sailed across the sea and they spoke of Phoenicia and Mycenae and Babylon.
Until she, too, decided to leave her banks and venture forth. She knew her tributaries and her lakes. She had spent geologic ages with the sea at her delta. But her people had ventured into the world, and she wanted to as well. It couldn't take that long to traverse, if the sea she ran to was the center of the world, as he often boasted.
She took the form of her people and called herself Nile. She clothed herself in their fashion and walked their paths.
She left her land, left Egypt, and traveled.
--
She walked east, the direction of beginnings, across stone and sand, finding more trees than those she grew and more animals than those she nurtured.
The first river she came to, she knelt at, letting his water lap at her robe. She reached out to touch his surface and whispered, "Greetings, brother."
After a moment, the river stirred and he began to emerge. First his head, covered in dark, tousled curls dripping water, then skin the same brown as his banks. He sat next to her. "Greetings, sister."
His name was Tigris and his twin brother was Euphrates. The three of them sat in the shade of a palm tree nurtured by Euphrates' waters and ate dates. Nile told them of her Egypt and the brothers told her of their Ur, their Assyria, and their Babylon.
When the sun had set in the west, the direction of endings, she stood to leave.
"Wait," Tigris cried. "Won't you stay here with us longer?"
"Yes," said Euphrates. "We have only just met, and it's getting dark."
Nile just smiled at them. "You are welcome to join me," she told them. "But I have a lot of world left to see. Besides," she laughed brightly. "I am a river; I have no fear of moonlight."
--
Neither Tigris nor Euphrates accompanied her when she left their banks. Neither did Indus or Ganga, though Mae Khong and Yangtze were persuaded to come with her as far as Volga before they elected to turn back.
When they parted from her, she traveled back to her own riverbed, sinking into the curves and cataracts that had been hers since her birth. She dreamed away a century, lazily watching her people build their cities higher and higher against the centuries-old weathered backdrop of stacked rocks. They had been particularly excited about the stacked rocks, she recalled, though the reasoning behind it was never clear. There were whispers of Rome and then there were murmurs of Ptolemy.
After a rest, she stood once more, free from her banks. The world was much wider than Wadj-Ur had lead her to believe, and there was still too much to see to stop.
She followed her own tributaries south and then beyond. She briefly greeted Nyanza as she passed before plunging into the open savanna. There she met Zambezi, who eagerly showed his sister his breathtaking waterfalls, and Kongo, who wound through rainforest. She traveled with Ọya for a time along her riverbed, catching a glimpse of the distant ocean, before she circled back along Wadj-Ur's coast to her home.
The people along the shores had grown more numerous and their cities grew ever more intricate, shining with colors in the sunlight. The air hung with songs, and Nile only paused briefly at her own banks to verify her people's joy and continuing prosperity before she continued on.
She flitted across Europe, meeting Dneiper and Danube before running into Thames with both Rhine and Rhône when travelling across France. The English river's unfortunately snow-pale complexion showed his flush all too well, though his bluster was for naught with the two French rivers giggling together in the background.
She made many friends across the continents, each promising in turn to repay the visit, though she could not promise when she would be back in her own riverbed. She was enjoying the new sights and sounds all too much to commit to a deadline.
--
Eventually, she ran out of land, sitting on a hillside with Douro, splitting a bottle of his wine. She looked to the west, the direction of endings, and saw only the vast, glinting sea named for the Atlas Mountains, which held up the sky.
She sighed and took a swig from the bottle he offered her. "I know there is always more to see," she said, gesturing aimlessly with the bottle, "But I wish I could just see to the other side. There's land over there, you know," she continued as Douro tried to grab the bottle from her gesturing hand. "A whole vast other continent. I spoke to Pacific once, when I was east," the direction of beginnings, "and he said there's a whole 'nother continent between him and Atlantic."
Douro finally succeeded in slipping the bottle from her hands and took a sip. "Ahh. Excellent vintage, if I do say so myself," he mumbled. Then he looked back at her. "Why don't you sail west, then?"
She squinted at him. "Have they started sailing out there? Last I heard they were still afraid of running into kraken."
Douro sighed, and it sounded like a laugh. "Yes, Nile. They got all the way across a century or two ago, I think. They've got regular routes now." He looked at her sideways. "Didn't you hear about this up north? A lot of ships are out of London; Thames must have known."
"Thames seemed a little, ah, occupied at the time," she said carefully. "It didn't come up."
Douro snorted. "Yes, well, Rhine and Rhône ought to keep him busy between the two of them, at least." He offered her the bottle back and she took it.
She drank deeply. "They're really sailing west now?"
"Really really."
--
They were sailing west. The humans were always so industrious, Nile thought happily. Before the launch, she went down to the docks and spoke to Atlantic. Pacific had given her a message to pass along, if she ever reached the other ocean. It consisted of a heartfelt message and a poorly constructed poem or two.
Nile wouldn't have been impressed by those poems, but Atlantic seemed inordinately pleased by the attempt.
--
She was talking to a young canal, Erie, when she felt the first twinge. Nile frowned and rubbed absently at her chest.
Erie noticed and broke off her narrative on the variety of colors in the local trees. "Are you okay?" Her voice was a soft brogue that was out of place against the straighter tones of Hudson and Susquehanna. That was what came of being carved by men and not by time, Nile supposed.
She shook her head. "It's nothing. What were you saying about the autumnal colors?"
The slight pain in her chest didn't diminish, but Nile was able to push it out of mind and focus on her young sister.
--
Later, much later, she would be glad that she had been talking to Mississippi at the time. The river was the oldest and largest on the continent, blessed with many tributaries, so she was able to get Nile where she needed to go.
All that registered at the time was Mississippi's face creased in worry as a sharp pain seared through Nile's chest and the world faded around her.
Her consciousness washed in and out until she came to and found another river crouched over her. His long, straight black hair was pulled back and his skin was the color of desert sands. "Oh good, you are awake."
He leaned back and Nile was able to slowly sit upright with his support. The faint twinge she had become accustomed to since meeting Erie had multiplied, a steady pain that flared when she breathed. She looked around and saw Mississippi and a third river hovering at her elbow. She looked back at her aide. "Who are you?"
He smiled at her. "I am Colorado, sister." He gestured. "Mississippi, you know. I don't know if you've met our other sister, Missouri." The river gave Nile a shy smile and a small wave.
"No, I hadn't had the privilege." Nile returned the smile before it faded from her face and she turned back to Colorado. "What happened to me?"
He sighed heavily and sat down on the ground next to her, looking her steadily in the eye. "You've been dammed," he said. Damned. A human homophone had never sounded so apt.
She stared at him and found her hand had wandered up to rub the skin over her heart. "Dammed?" she echoed faintly.
He inclined his head. "Yes. The pain you are feeling is because they are trying to control the floodwaters and thus--"
"Control my heartbeat," she finished quietly in disbelief. Her people had done this. Her people, who she had nurtured from their first steps to the building of their cities, who she had watched grow and whose crops she had blessed. River-blessed, she thought bitterly. There was nothing blessed about her now.
The rivers gave her a moment to collect her thoughts before Mississippi broke in. "When I understood what had happened, I knew Colorado would be the best one to help you through this. I have a handful of small dams myself, but I'm not a desert river." When Nile met her eyes, Mississippi smiled kindly. "I do not wax and wane with the seasons. The dams are uncomfortable, but they do not impact my rhythms."
Nile turned to Colorado. He tilted his head, causing some of his hair to escape its tie and partially obscure his face. "It was twenty-six years ago," he began. "Like you, I am a desert river. My basin is wide and my tributaries many. The rains wax and wane like the moon, and my banks run low or run over as the year turns." Nile could see the shadow of his jawline clench as he steeled himself to continue. "Then those who ruled my shores decided that I could no longer run free, that my flow would no longer be determined by the rains and the wind, but by the regulation of their dials and switches. I was..." he struggled to find the right word.
"Shackled," Nile completed softly.
His shoulders eased. "Yes," he agreed, his voice rough. "I was shackled to their whims and forced to bend to their wishes." He seemed to run out of words.
Nile leaned forward to brush her shoulder against his. "Does it ever get easier?" she asked him quietly.
"No," he said gently. "But sometimes you think of other things for long enough that it is almost like forgetting."
She reached out and wrapped her arms around him. He hugged her back tightly. Nile wasn't sure if Colorado was shaking or crying; she knew she was.
Mississippi and Missouri kept vigil as the two damned rivers grieved and Nile tried to ignore the chain tightening around her heart.
--
She stayed with Colorado for a while, longer than she had spent anywhere else. He told her of his people long ago and the remnants of his people clinging to his banks even now. She told him of her travels and all the other rivers she had met. When she tried to speak of Egypt, she found her tongue frozen in her mouth. She couldn't reconcile the people she remembered - Tiye, Kheti - with the people who had succeeded in chaining her.
But though they had tamed her form, they could not tame her spirit, and eventually Nile had to move on.
"Thank you," she whispered to the space between them, resting her forehead on Colorado's.
"You are always welcome here," he told her before tilting his head to place a kiss on her brow. "I hope you find peace, mighty queen."
--
She flew to Egypt on an aeroplane. She didn't go home; she wasn't sure she would ever be able to go home again. Home, which had seemed such a nebulous concept when she had first heard of it, had so sharply defined itself in the deluge and flood of her birth and the curves and cataracts of her bed, that it seemed impossibly out of reach, even when she stood on her own riverbank.
It was strange, seeing her own form from the outside. The river was deceptively placid and calm. Though that wasn't quite right anymore, was it? The river was placid and calm now. They had imprisoned her heartbeat in concrete and rebar and she couldn't forgive them that, wasn't sure if she would ever be able to forgive that.
She couldn't imagine what it would feel like to slip into her river now. Just being was hard enough as it was, the dam a steady sharp ache in her chest that flared when she breathed. Actually feeling the dam hold her heart back might just shred it for good.
She looked at the river and felt her grip tighten on the railing she was holding onto until her knuckles went pale from the strain. She pressed her lips together and fought the urge to vault the railing and take her place in the river, damning all consequences. She was born of the deluge and the flood. They couldn't hold her back if she truly fought them with all her being. She could tear down the dam, howl down her banks, and flood cities all along her length with an outpouring of water. A liter for every tear she had shed since the day she had been damned. They would rue--
"Mama, look!" a small boy behind her cried with delight. Startled, Nile turned enough to see him out of the corner of her eye. He was young, pointing excitedly at a dove nestled in a palm on the shore. His mother scooped him up and held him close. Bending their heads together and pointing at the bird, she began softly telling her son about the birds of their homeland.
She blinked and they were Kheti and Tiye. She blinked again and the mirage was gone, leaving only two of her people living on her banks, discussing the animals she sheltered on her shores.
Nile took a breath and felt the worst of her anger drain out of her. She wasn't Colorado. These were her people who had done this. The same people she had nurtured for thousands of her heartbeats. She was the deluge and the flood; she would not be tamed. But if any humans had the right to ask this of her, to request her to temper her temper, it would be these.
She sighed and hung her head, staring at the metal bar between her hands. She tried to push the dam out of her mind, counting her breaths and listening to the whirl of the river and the burble of the crowd. It's almost like forgetting.
"Excuse me," a hesitant voice interrupted. Nile looked to find a student near her, a brightly colored scarf offsetting the concern on her face. "Are you all right?"
Nile found herself answering honestly, surrounded on all sides by the waters she refused to return to and the humans she couldn't refuse. "No. But I will be."
--
Epilogue
--
"Did you hear?" Paraná asked Nile eagerly.
Nile laughed, and her heart barely ached. "I doubt it. I travel all over, but usually by the time I reach anywhere the news is long-since old."
Paraná waived her hand impatiently. "This won't be old news for a while. They found water in space."
Nile straightened up. "Really?"
Paraná nodded and explained that liquid water had been discovered on Enceladous, a moon of Saturn. Scientists with complicated cameras and self-propelling vehicles that had taken photographs of something so far away that Nile wouldn't be able to see it if she stood on the highest peak in the clearest weather and stared at the stars.
Paraná was bobbing up and down in her excitement at the news, but it took another moment for its fully implications to sink in to Nile.
"There's...more of us?" She looked at Paraná in astonishment.
Paraná nodded. "It will be ages before we can meet them, though. They won't be sending anything to the surface for years yet."
Nile stared into the distance for a moment, her mind swirling, and then shook her head and looked back at Paraná. "We're going to need to figure out how to get something on that vehicle, then."
If she were in her river, Nile would be able to quickly traverse the length of her course. As soon as she left her riverbed, though, she was confined to the capabilities of the form she took. Humans could travel well, but there were limits to what they could accomplish. Even if she took to the skies, no bird born of the earth would be able to stretch her wings far enough to reach that distant moon. Even the winged fish of heartbeats past wouldn't have been able to touch the stars.
It would be ages, maybe even hundreds of her own heartbeats, before human feet would touch down safely on the surface of Enceladous. But maybe they could slip something on the next capsule. A touch of brine from the ocean, a hint of fresh water from the sea, a ribbon of current from the river, all tied together to let their distant brother or sister know they were not alone.
And one day, when humanity traveled to touch that distant moon, they would be able to welcome their distant sibling in person.
--
Fin.
A/N:
Rivers that make an appearance:
Nile - Not just a river in Egypt. ;-)
Tigris & Euphrates - Rivers in what is today Iraq. During much of ancient and medieval history, this part of the middle east was called Persia. The region between the rivers (Mesopotamia) is one of the many cradles of civilization, though scientists believe hominin evolution really began in eastern Africa.
Indus - Flows from Tibet to Pakistan. The Indus River valley is another cradle of civilization.
Ganga - Also known as the Ganges, this river flows across northern India and through Bangladesh. She is worshipped as a goddess in Hinduism.
Mae Khong - Commonly called the Mekong, this river starts in southern China and flows through much of southeast Asia.
Yangtze - This river flows west to east across the middle of China and is the third-longest river in the world, after the Nile and the Amazon.
Volga - The Volga is located in western Russia and empties into the Caspian Sea. Her name means "wet" in most Slavic languages.
Wadj-Ur - Wadj-Ur, which literally means "great green" was the Egyptian name for the Mediterranean Sea. "Mediterranean" comes from the Roman word for the sea which mean "in the middle of land; inland". The Mediterranean was the center of a large part of the ancient world.
Nyanza - Nyanza is one of the local names for Lake Victoria, which was renamed in the 1850s. One of the two upstream branches of the Nile flows through Lake Victoria, though the actual source of the White Nile is even further south. So Nyanza and Nile are old friends. :-)
Zambezi - The Zambezi starts in south-central Africa and flows east into the Indian Ocean. He has several sets of waterfalls, including Victoria Falls, which looks amazing from the photos.
Kongo - Also known as the Congo or sometimes the Zaire, this river is the second longest in Africa (after the Nile) and the third largest in the world in terms of sheer water volume (after the Amazon and the Ganges). He starts in central Africa and flows in an inverted-U shape before reaching the Atlantic. The Congo rainforest is the second-largest in the world (after the Amazon).
Ọya - Ọya is one of the many local and regional names for the Niger River in western Africa, which starts near the Atlantic and makes an inverted-V shape, emptying into the Gulf of Guinea. Ọya is a Yorùbá goddess or Orisha of wind, violent storms, and children.
Dneiper - This river starts in Russia and then flows through Belarus and Ukraine before emptying into the Black Sea. He has up to 32,000 tributaries and includes 80% of the water resources of Ukraine.
Danube - The Danube starts in Germany and flows through or along ten countries before reaching the Black Sea. They are the second-longest river in Europe after the Volga.
Thames - The Thames flows west to east across southern England through London and empties into the English Channel. There is an excellent book series entitled "Rivers of London" that includes wizarding police officers as well as anthropomorphizations of most of the rivers in the UK.
Rhine - The Rhine begins in Switzerland and flows north to the Netherlands, eventually emptying into the North Sea.
Rhône - The Rhône also begins in Switzerland, but then flows south through France to the Mediterranean. No, I didn't expect when this fic started I would be writing in a throuple of European rivers either, but here we are.
Douro - This river is called the Duero in Spain, where it originates, and Douro in Portugal, where it empties into the Atlantic. He flows through a region of the peninsula that is excellent for growing things like grapes, used in the creation of wine and port.
Erie - This is a series of canals and lochs across New York state in the northeast US connecting the Hudson River to Lake Erie, the easternmost of the Great Lakes. She was completed by 1825 and was mostly built by Irish immigrants.
Hudson - The Hudson runs north to south in the eastern part of New York state (northeast US) and empties into the Atlantic at New York City.
Susequehanna - This river flows through the northeast US, beginning in Pennsylvania and New York state before meeting in Pennsylvania and continuing southward to empty into the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.
Mississippi - The Mississippi is a major river in the US, running straight down the center of the country from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way, it passes through or along ten states.
Missouri - The Missouri begins in the northwest US just east of the Rockies in Montana and then flows diagonally across the country to meet the Mississippi. She is the longest river in the US, beating out the Mississippi by a mile or so.
Colorado - The Colorado runs diagonally across the southwest US, beginning in Colorado and winding through the desert to the Gulf of California. The Grand Canyon was carved by the Colorado. The Hoover Dam, the river's largest dam, was completed in 1935 as a US government WPA project during the Great Depression. Some of the Native American groups that originally lived along the Colorado are still in the area, but control of the Colorado's water rights has been highly contested by state and reservation governments across the southwest.
Paraná - This river begins in Brazil and runs through Paraguay and Argentina before emptying into the Atlantic. She is the second-longest river in South America, after the Amazon. One of her tributaries runs near São Paulo, where Brazil's National Institute for Space Research is located.
Historical Notes:
Dams - Around 1900, the Aswan Low Dam was completed, followed by the completion of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. These are referenced in the fic as the twinge when Nile is visiting Erie and the incident when she's with Mississippi, respectively. History is full of ancient and medieval dams, but these are the two big ones on the Nile that I was able to find.
Ar-barkit - I found a reference somewhere that ancient Egyptians referred to the Nile as Ar or Aur meaning "black" because of the color of the silt she left behind. I blindly swiped barkit from an Egyptian Arabic translation site; I believe it is the correct conjugation for third-person feminine (i.e., "she blessed"), but I am absolutely not versed in any form of Egyptian or Arabic, so I will plead artistic license on this one.
Tiye and Kheti were taken from a list of ancient Egyptian names. They're probably a little new for the hominin culture I was intending, but I figured at least it was geographically accurate. :-)
Blessing of the River - I found a reference to a Nubian tradition following a birth. The first time the mother and baby are out in public afterwards (usually about a month or so after birth), they go down to the Nile with other women and children from their village, toss offerings into the water, eat together, and ritually bathe.
Hapi is sometimes depicted as the Egyptian god of the Nile, but it's more accurate to say that Hapi is the Egyptian god of the Nile's annual floods. He's usually depicted as androgenous or intersex and sometimes as a hippo.