Xena unrolled the last of the Egyptian scroll and read the last entry again in amazement. She had spent the entire day reading this adventure of Gabrielle and it amazed her to read about the growth and ability that the modest words of her bard revealed to her. Gabrielle never wrote about herself unless she could avoid it and if she did, she usually was very hard on herself or presented herself as a weaker person than she actually was. Xena had known about that since she had heard Gabrielle read from her scrolls the first time. In these journals she found more truth about Gabrielle than what had stood in many of the stories about her. She looked down at the last entries on that scroll.
74 days.
I am leaving Egypt again. Xena was right they did need a girl with a chakram and I managed to be that person in my own way. I have begun dreaming again or maybe it was just the proximity to an earlier resting place of my soul. Sometimes I still feel Xena near and I know she is listening to my thoughts about her all the time. One day we will meet again, but not today as today I am boarding a safe little Greek merchant ship heading for Athens. I am planning to go home. But first I will have to face the burial of Xena's ashes in the crypt of her family. I will have to face up to the many people, who cared about her. And I am going to have to break the news to Ares and Aphrodite as gently as possible. After I have been home, I will go and find Eve. She deserves to know of this from me not some stranger. I hope I can make it in time. Strangely it seems some of my melancholy has disappeared with my adventure here. Maybe it was all the troubles, maybe it was the grandeur of the Valley of Kings, the great desert, the beauty of Alexandria or even the vision of another life in the past with Xena that helped me, I don't know, but it did.
Plini managed to get somehow get the legionnaires to pull back and now that Lucius is dead the plundering of ancient treasures from Egypt seems to have stopped. No one seems to know that he betrayed his people to stop Lucius; they believe I did it and I don't care to correct them. Of course that meant I had to hightail it out of there, but again Plini came to my aid and arranged for my safe passage through the land. He could be a good ally in the future. Iaret wasn't too pleased that I didn't manage to stop the battle from happening, but I am not worried about furthering the growth of the belief in Isis anyway. Still she helped me and Mytilene leave the country dodging the Roman soldiers looking for us just as much as Plini did. Mytilene wants going to travel north to meet up with Varia and her own amazon sisters as soon as we reach Greece. I hope everything goes well for my sister amazons.
I have begun making poetry instead of stories to satisfy my creative appetites, but they don't come out that well yet, so I won't be writing them down just yet. Maybe one day I'll be known as a poet as I am for being Xena's bard. Hopefully I will be remembered for that and not just as a warrior.
Teaser:
Remember to watch out for the next part of the series called: "Heritage". Follow Gabrielle's first real prolonged stay at home since her leaving Poteidia in "Sins Of The Past" as she must make peace with her past, her family and handle a major discovery about herself, while stopping a local warrior from kindling a deadly war.