It was said I looked like my mother. On rare occasions, it was said that I resembled my father. Like flipping a coin, it depended upon which face it fell on. As much as I tried to disguise my dark colouring and hair as raven as the darkest of nights, interspersed with stars, as studied by my namesake, I couldn’t hide the genetic disposition that was, and still is, my burden. That came from my father, you see. I’d been told that mother was a master of reinvention. Shifting depending on what the political climate required and excelling, on the whole. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing these musings of a time long forgotten and couldn’t help but feel an affinity to my plight. I too was a shape shifter, following in her footsteps whilst surrounded by a landscape steeped in my father’s heritage. Even when the statues were torn down, I could sense him in the air that flowed in and out of my lungs. I felt him all around me, despite my yearnings.

The place was bare and entirely modest. Fitting for a mere commoner. The walls were cold, the interior dreary. This added to the dankness, which transitioned to my mood. My living conditions were as depressive as my mind, and some days it couldn’t be quelled. No servants were to be found around these quarters. At least not on the second floor, above the bustling. Not one. On my worst days, I willed myself to remember the pomp and pageantry and opulence by way of raising my serotonin levels. The endless platters of food, the exotic new discoveries, the enthralling academia, and the reverence that was bestowed upon me. I was half her after all, and she was everything. This place wasn’t like the one that fired my belly and fuelled my imagination. It humbled me sometimes to think of the workers I used to observe in the old place. Working tirelessly and meticulously to maintain the beautiful things that decorated the sand-coloured flooring on which they sat, they were menacingly beautiful. Endlessly tunnelling and burrowing to create the most astounding and rich underground museums the world would ever see. Oh, to think of what people would discover at a later date! If they ever found them, that is. The flashbacks of my old life kept me going at my lowest moments, and I was happy for merely having experienced such times that I could call upon when urgently required. Some just lived like I was. They knew no different, I guess.

My mother used to talk to me about the place I found myself in. Father did too when he wasn’t busying himself with another conquest. I understood from a young age that certain things take precedence. Political manoeuvrings, for example. Quelling uprisings. Decisions with regards to depictions on stone, that sort of thing. It was important to her that she appealed to the masses. I remember begging my nurse to let me walk amongst the ones of whom she was so desperate to placate. When she finally relented and I was heavily bedecked in unfamiliar clothing, we did. Some cursed her and their workload, but, on the whole, the feedback was positive. Adoring in most cases. It made me feel proud. I was half her. Now, when I walk amongst the new people, the reviews are scathing. Not only of her, but the old place also. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard the words ‘seductress’ and ‘harlot’ uttered. The word ‘harlot’ perplexed me so much that I had no other option but to ask him who shielded me what its meaning was. Upon his delivering it, I was shocked, confused, and then angry.
When I closed my eyes, I could conjure up her image. Well, I could for a few years at least. Her blackened eyes, the waxy hair, and the smell of fragranced oils that emanated from her very pores. I could feel her soft, potion-drenched skin in my hands as I saw her. Her slight yet authoritative voice resounded in my ears and coursed through my body. My dearest, most blessed T, she would say, stroking the artefact on my head. We are fortunate to have you, and so is this place, she would say. I would feel taller than the highest thing the workers had ever made when she said this. Then father would come, and he too would anoint me with endless compliments. In the new place, I was nothing special. Not even special enough to warrant one icon. Instead, I was tasked with cleaning the tools of the chiseller. For the new statues that would soon erupt all over. If only they knew who they were in the presence of. Likenesses of me should be commissioned.
I can still remember the night I set sail to the new place, in a cloak of darkness. The hushed voices and the water lapping around me. I was frozen in abject terror, so there was no use in them urging me to be still. I could only be as still as the latest offering to God had been. What else could I be having been told she was no more? I had already suffered this prior with father. Half of me was gone then and the other half had been annihilated as swiftly as the serpent had invaded her bloodstream with its venomous offering. As I lay, ensconced and unmoving, I willed the God to take me also. Heartbroken and alone. I knew immediately that nothing would ever be the same. I was an outcast, and my punishment would be to exist without having ever existed. I ceased to exist, like the other half of me.
I am the chiseller’s son to those who ask at the market. I am instructed not to speak and adhere dutifully, as I did before. That’s why I’m so good at listening, and it’s a true skill. My handler tells me that one day the new statues will also fall and be replaced with another likeness, and I must be silent until then. I must blend into the beige. He tells me that when I come of age, he will have tutored me enough to be as astute and fearsome as my father. He warns that I be cautious of traitors and urges me to never become complacent due to familiarity. Friends can be enemies, he insists. Which makes me question his very being. But, I’m astute enough to not let him be privy to these thinkings. I enquire as to my eldest brother, but the information is not forthcoming. It never is; instead, he urges me to be still, like I was on the water.

Alas, I will do as instructed and bide my time as the man requests. For I am the son of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra VII, Ptolemy, and I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life. My time will come, and all will be as it was before.