On the banks of the Nile, by the reed beds, the young pharaoh sat on a mat woven from papyrus and reed stalks, silently polishing his beloved fishing spear; even his slender silhouette exuded a sense of docility.

The fiery sun slowly sank in the west behind the pyramids of the Nile Valley. With a swift flick of his wrist, the fish spear shot forward like an arrow released from a fully drawn bow. You cannot imagine the impossible strength that erupted from those seemingly frail shoulders in an instant-when a terrified scream rang out.

If you were to look only at the top half of the scene, it would be a leisurely moment of the young pharaoh practicing his skills in his spare time; the bottom half, however, carried a distinct whiff of bloodshed.

Of course, that terrified scream did not come from me-someone who had only arrived in this unfamiliar land three months ago from the year 2025.

A time-traveling girl getting struck by a pharaoh’s fishhook in a reed bed, leading to some romantic, tormented, deep-seated love affair-that’s not the sort of nonsense I, having just crawled back home from the fields, had the time to get involved in.

The clay I’d collected two months ago along the banks of the Nile, my father’s barley beer, and a small bag of salt I’d wheedled out of my mother.

I gathered a clutch of eggs from a bird’s nest in the reeds-one goose egg and four duck eggs.

I made a jar of salted eggs.

At the time, there was chaos and commotion outside, along with cries of “Spare me!” and the like, but I didn’t have time to go out and see what was happening.

Starving to the point where my stomach was pressed against my back, while my family went out to see what was happening, I held my newborn little sister, Heiwa, in one arm and reached into a jar with the other to pull out a duck egg.

I rinsed it briefly in another jar.

The green-shelled Nile duck egg exuded an enchanting charm under the flickering light of the oil lamp. As I cracked it open with both hands, the bright red, fragrant yolk gushed out unexpectedly. After licking it clean in a flash, I savored it with a piece of bread and felt an indescribable sense of happiness.

A tear slid down from my left eye and, after I took a bite of the fragrant, soft yolk, finally rolled into my mouth.

Big Brother Faria was the first to run back. He plopped down on the reed mat and began chomping on bread, muttering under his breath, “The King is too merciful. A woman with such ill intentions should have been fed to the crocodiles right there on the spot.”