"Would you quit flipping channels like that?"

Khnum ignored him/her, his eyes slightly glazing over as his thumb rhythmically prodded the remote. His jaw slowly ground a cheeto into pulp.

"You're not even stopping at each channel long enough to see what's on."

He only blinked slowly as the images continued to flicker by. Most people assume that insolence and stubbornness are just natural traits of someone with the head of a ram, but the reality is more indirect. He developed these characteristics as a defence to all the teasing he had suffered back in school.

"Oh god, you're as stubborn as ever. Just like the time you rejected my power-sharing agreement without even reading it."

This time it was Hapi who had pushed a button. Khnum's head snapped over and he focused a burning glare on him/her. "Don't you bring that up again!" he bellowed.

"I'm just saying, if we had quit bickering over who controls the Nile flood and worked together, we may have been able to see this God fellow coming and done something about it."

"They call him Allah here, now, you ignorant gnat. And how many times do I need to tell you it wouldn't have made a difference anyway?" Khnum sighed before continuing.

"It wasn't the element of surprise that gave him the edge, you know, it was his whole approach to things. God of everything! I wish I had thought of that." The remote now lay on the couch between them, as Khnum needed both hands to accentuate his points. "You see how easy that makes it for him to thrive, that adaptability thing he's got going? We never stood a chance."

"Well, climatology and hydrodynamics had managed to make gains on him."

"Bah, not even gods. Pathetic, if you ask me."

"Pass me a chee-to, would you?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure."

They sat in silence for a few moments, their distracted attentions being drawn occassionally to the window. From their third floor flat in Aswan, they could see the banks of the river that had once made them great. It looked dramatically the same as yesterday, and the day before that... Hapi again broke the silence.

"I bet this Allah never even shed a tear when the floods stopped." His/Her eyes still moistened at the thought. "Ooh, what I wouldn't have given for a chance to hurl a thunderbolt at that Nasser fellow. Miss-yur Pray-zee-dent or whoever he was."

"It's pronounced president, knucklehead. Kind of like a modern pharaoh."

"Who ever heard of a pharaoh building his pyramid blocking the Nile? For gods' sake, they never even buried him in it!"

More silence. "See, this is why you shouldn't bring this stuff up. It's such a downer," noted Khnum.

Hapi had picked up the remote in the meantine, and was flipping almost as mindlessly as Khnum before. Being the more fickle of the two, though, his/her eyes soon lit up. "Ooh... Dancing with the Stars! I love this show..."