[A/N: This is set well after the events at the end of "Prince of Egypt", twenty years later. The main character, Gershom, is the first-born son of Tzipporah and Moses, and will be the main narrator for most of the story. His brother is Elizer (Moses in the Bible had two sons, so took it from there). Much as I'd LOVE to own PoE, I do not, and the characters belong to Dreamworks (and the Bible), not me.]

Chapter One

Gershom

My name means "I was a stranger in a strange land". But it isn't me who is a stranger here in my home out in the desert's wilderness. My father—Moses—had named me Gershom, for he had been a foreigner in a foreign land. I am the first-born of his two children; his other child is also a son, Elizer. Elizer is younger by two years, and he is not as fascinated as I am by our father's distant history. I wanted to know why father looked so mournful during the annual Passover, and why he would always slip away afterward for a short while. Certainly, it was a sombre time, but only he would slip away and not return until we began clearing away the feast. The first time I had tried to follow him—I was only five then—mother had gently stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

"One day you will understand," she had whispered into my ear, "He will tell you when he is ready."

I could not get any more out of my mother, Tzipporah, and it was many years before I would finally learn why. It did not make it any less frustrating for a curious child such as I who wanted to know everything. Elizer, on the other hand, wasn't as curious, and didn't appear to be as mystified by father's sadness at Passover.

One day, us two brothers were idling in a corner of our cavernous tent, shading ourselves from the merciless heat of the desert. It was still only the morning after Passover—my eighteenth Passover—and our conversation soon turned to our father's sorrow during the annual remembrance and feast.

"Everyone is sad on Passover," Elizer reasoned dryly, "after all we remember the first born who died on the night God delivered us out of Egypt."

"Father always stays out for a long time."

"It has been long ago enough for him to get over the death of the first born. They were only Egyptians."

I gaped at Elizer, speechless with shock. I couldn't think of anything to say except his name.

"Elizer!"

But my shocked voice wasn't the only one reproaching him. Mother had wandered in, her arms folded over her chest, her eyes reproachful. She strode over to Elizer and sat down near us.

"Elizer, what I have heard from you has shocked me!" Tzipporah scolded, "You do not understand what your father has been through!"

Elizer scowled, "It's been a long time ago, mother. How long ago now? Thirteen years?"

"Twenty," mother corrected, voice still stern, "but that does not give you the right to tell him to 'get over it'. Do not think to tell him so to his face. Your own father."

"Then why is he still grieving?" I asked before my brother could say anything worse.

Tzipporah inhaled long through her nose, her eyes staring into mine before shifting to Elizer's. She kept her face carefully neutral in expression, her voice level when she spoke again.

"It is complicated," she said at last, revealing nothing. "You will learn."

"We're old enough to learn, are we not?" I asked, "I am eighteen!"

"I am aware you are eighteen," she conceded.

"Then why are we not told?" I stood up, craning my neck to look outside the tent for father. "Can he not tell us now?"

Mother stood up, joining me at the tent entrance. She moved to touch my shoulder, but I moved away. I didn't want reassurances and pats on the shoulder.

"Mother, I am no longer a child," I argued, "I want to know. I've always wanted to know."

I squinted into the white heat, trying to make out father's unmistakeable silhouette, as he always carried around his staff. Mother was noticeably quiet; I didn't want to look at her face. She would probably be pitying me for my impatience and yearning to know of father's experience of the first Passover meal. Her blue skirts swished over her feet as she stepped out of the tent.

"Come with me. We shall look for Moses."

Was I to find out at last, or would father be as stubborn in not revealing the beginning of Passover's history?

I knew we would discover father in the midst of a sizeable crowd—if he wasn't with his family or alone with God, he would be in the centre of a mass of people. This morning, he and his brother, Aaron, were conversing with a number of other elders with a lot of gesticulating and waving of hands above their heads. Tzipporah cleared her throat gently, attracting the attention of a few Hebrews on the crowd's fringe.

"It's Tzipporah," a lady in a green dress nudged her neighbour.

The crowd swiftly cleared a path for us to walk straight to Moses. Though the occasional pair of eyes watched us with curiosity, most heads craned in the direction of the two men, eyes gazing with deep respect at their deliverer and his brother. As soon as there was a gap in the conversation, Tzipporah spoke to her husband.

"Moses," she said in a low volume, "our son, Gershom, wishes to know about the Passover. I will speak of Elizer a later time."

I had the feeling Elizer was about to get a stern lecture from father tonight. No matter what others thought of the Egyptians, Moses always made it clear that not all the Egyptians were guilty or blind to others' suffering. The two Egyptian guards who had abandoned their homeland and joined the Hebrews were proof enough. How Egypt herself fared, I shuddered to imagine.

Moses dug his staff into the sand, locking eye contact with me, his expression calm. He ran his fingers over his beard in the way he did when mulling over a decision.

"Very well, Gershom," he conceded, "but understand, it will have to wait until this evening."

I couldn't help a grin, "You mean you're going to tell me?"

"Don't be too excited," he warned, dark eyes solemn, "it is not a story full of happiness."

I didn't care—father was to tell me about Passover's first night, something I had wanted to learn about for most of my lifetime now. I couldn't wait until the evening drenched the desert in a river of gold as the sun melted under the horizon.