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The Dusk and The Dawn
by Bethany
Daniel Jackson stared at her. He stared at her, and stared at her until he was no longer aware of where he was. Someone bumped by him in the street, and his world poured back into focus, like an event horizon that he commanded. It dissipated, all back into him, and with a rush and a snap kind of like the many times he completed a journey through the Gate, the freshness of an outside world hit him in the face. He looked at the distorted woman. A pane of glass, and a world of realities stood between them. He could have sworn. He didn’t think, yet he moved forward and onward.
“May I help you?” a woman said.
Daniel looked at this woman for the first time. She wore glasses, as did he, but this was a woman who seemed as strange and antiquated as her shop. She’s probably lived here her entire life… He thought.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, “but may I be of any assistance?”
“Yes. I’m sorry…” said Daniel, a feeling of far away bewitchment was creeping over him. It came from the very essence of this woman’s shop. He felt as he had back in the monk’s sanctuary at Keb, as he had when feeling the wormhole through which he travelled to Abydos against his skin for the very first time. Like when the others had gone home, and Sha’re and I… He broke off that trail of thought purposefully. A sudden wave of sadness had hit him. It’s intensity, he had not felt the like of in recent times. This woman already thinks I’m nuts! He thought, making a conscious and concentrated effort to clear the choking cloud from his throat, and the stinging haze from his eyes. “Is that print in the window for sale?”
“Which?” Asked the woman, reasonably, and not impolitely.
“The one of the girl in the desert…” He explained
“And the lion?” The woman completed the print’s description.
“Yes” Daniel said simply.
“It is, for fifty dollars.” She added.
“Fine.” Daniel said, turning toward the window through which he had stared.
“It’s a rather odd combination, isn’t it?” The woman asked of him. “I mean, a girl in the sky as if she were some goddess, and the lion, in the desert, prowling in the semi-darkness. His eyes glow, y’know… Do you suppose he’s hiding in the shadows of the dawn or the dusk?”
“I’m not really sure…” Daniel said honestly.
“Neither am I.” Said the woman, bringing the print back around behind the counter with her.
"There you go.” Daniel handed over the money.
“Thank you.” The woman said pleasantly, as Daniel walked back out into the world.
He stared at the girl again. I’m not sure if I did right by getting this. He thought. But something made me. That was before I knew about you, He said to the girl in the painting, outloud, “I didn’t know that your eyes glowed, too.” He looked closer at the girl goddess.
He found himself in the desert. He was no longer staring at the picture of it. He was there. His mind was there, his body felt the coldness of night begin to fall, and desert sands brush against his face. He turned around. She stood there beside him.
“Sha’re…” He said, reaching out instantly, a hand that made his insides quiver as he touched her flesh.
“Daniel, do not let her spoil what you and I still treasure…” She held the hand with which he touched her face.
“She’s only a picture.” Daniel said, quietly, as he studied his wife.
“Not her, Daniel. Not her. This is what I am saying…” Sha’re pleaded, insistent.
“I bought the print because it made me think of you, and when I saw that her eyes glow, like the lion’s, it made me think of Amaunet, and not of you.” He knew what Sha’re meant now.
Sha’re’s simple clothes shifted slightly in the breeze of a cool desert night that had just begun. She stopped walking, bringing them both to a halt. “I am happy that you still think of me, my Daniel.”
“I don’t think I ever stop…” He said, meeting her gaze through more sudden tears in his eyes.
She touched the lump in his throat with healing hands, and he lay his head on her shoulder.
“Will I ever find you?” He asked Sha’re.
“We will find one another, Daniel. We already have. You are the lion whose sharp eyes protect me in the night.” She said, lifting his face with the hands of a nurturer, holding his searching eyes with her own. “Go now, my Daniel, on your journey. I will always be with you. The light in my eyes is my love for you. She is no longer my burden.”
“The Ancients told me that going with them would not bring us back together…” Daniel said.
“They are not gods, my Daniel. Their home is not heaven, but it is a little closer, and you know you can reach out to me…” Sha’re brushed his cheek.
With those words, with her words, every last binding broke free from Daniel’s mind and body. His heart could afford to be free, for Sha’re could be found in the desert. Daniel arose once again, the sand beneath his bare feet, his soul shimmering in beauty. He lit the stars for Sha’re, and resumed his path.
The next day, Daniel went in to work at the SGC. He was met by Sam Carter in the elevator.
“You ok, Daniel?” She asked.
“Hmm… Uh, yeah…” He managed.
“Convincing.” Carter muttered.
“No. I’m ok… Honest.” He stated, knowing that she still hadn’t let up entirely on the overprotective front yet. “I just had an odd experience yesterday…”
“You sure you weren’t doing a shift in this place???” She smiled lightly.
“I definitely shifted somewhere…” Daniel recalled aloud, as he and Sam strode out of the now open elevator doors, and continued walking…
“Ohh…” Carter said, unable and unwilling to hide the concern in her voice.
“I saw Sha’re…” He answered.
“How? Where???” She asked.
“I think it was a dream…” Daniel uncertainly stated…
“Convincing…” Sam Carter replied once again, as she and Daniel split like forks in a road, she to her lab, he to his office.
“Jonas?” Daniel began his inquiry, as he beckoned his colleague to sit by him at his desk.
Jonas closed a book, planning to resume his studies on Latin later. “Hope you don’t mind me looking at that over there?…” He indicated the dictionary/Thesaurus with a nod of his head.
“You’re welcome to study in here, I told you that…” Daniel reminded him kindly. “Just don’t touch anything too old looking!” He wagged a finger in jest at Jonas, like a sage old master. “… Jonas… Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead…” Jonas Quinn replied welcomingly.
“When you were with Oma DeSala’s people…” He paused. “Did they tell you anything about where… where dreams and visions come from???… I, I mean… When I saw Oma and one of the monks at Keb, and when they spoke to me after the events on your planet, they told me to let go of all my preconceptions, of all my ideas about my place in the scheme of things…”
“Yes, Oma told me pretty much the same thing… And she told me that you were going to survive our fate, as would I, in some form…” He admitted.
“As you are now?” Daniel inquired.
“I came back, yeah…” Jonas was honest. “But being with Oma and her people has altered me in some ways, I admit… I see things differently, the same, through my eyes, but it’s like an intuition sensor’s been built in…”
“I know what you mean…” Daniel agreed. “So… So, you think I should trust my intuition… Is that what that was?”
“What what was, Dr. Jackson?” Jonas Quinn questioned.
“I talked with my wife last night…” Daniel stated, faraway in thought.
“Your wife, Sha’re, from Abydos… Former host of the deceased Goa’uld Amaunet…?” Quinn was just checking.
“I went to the desert with her…” Daniel explained, little by little.
“Not literally, I take it?” Jonas made sure… “Y’know, through the gate and everything…?”
“No. It was in another place, but I don’t know where I was… I mean, where I actually was, like as in space and time… It was Sha’re, and I was talking to her, and it was actually happening, all of it, yesterday, but it was like I was out of my body, like I’d taken a step outside this reality… “For a moment, I thought I had Ascended… My mind and body were illuminated with peace…” Daniel concluded.
“Like it felt when we were talking to Oma DeSala…” Jonas observed thoughtfully.
THE END…