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A middle-aged woman slips through the crowds, her body concealed by a bat-winged cloak. It’s hot in the city which will someday be known as Cairo. The streets are taken up by tired workers, chatting in various languages about the construction the new dragon has ordered them to do.
Ava Huskangus wonders if she’ll be around to see the Apophis office in all its glory, the way she remembers it from thousands of years in the future ago. She wonders if she’ll get to speak to Apophis again. Or, rather, for the first time. She has a lot to say. She wants to thank him. She wants to reprimand him. It’s... complicated.
She moves in the shadows still, even after decades away from the dark undercities of her youth. It’s bright out, the sun high in the sky, and wearing black casts her in sharp relief against the stone buildings.
It’s surprising how much of the city is the same as it is now. The streets have a similar alignment, and the back alleys are just as much a maze as they were when she ran after the funeral. She thinks she can see the building that will become the Pharaoh bar, although at this time it looks to be a butcher’s shop.
She remembers the Pharaoh. She remembers being angry, and she remembers running off. And then… right, Carter. With his curse, and his sobbing, and a little bit later with his spike through the leg in a pit. Wow, she hasn’t thought about Carter in a while.
It’s certainly been a while. She was dying, back in Cairo, that’s what she remembers most about it. Waking up every morning with blood on her sheets. The knowledge, told to her in stern and holy tones, that she would become a monster.
And she remembers them , too. Of course. She always does, no matter where she goes. She did in Rome, she does in the villa, and she does here. In Cairo. Hamid’s big house. Azu’s orcish moonshine. Grizzop’s…
Grizzop. She remembers Grizzop, too. What summation can she make for everything he was?
There’s no ladder in the alley where there was before, obviously. It’s not like it’d stay consistent through a millennium. She climbs, and pretends she doesn’t feel the aging creak in her knees and ankles as she gets to the top.
That had been another thing. She’s not as useful anymore. She can’t scale buildings like she used to, can’t pick locks as quick or dodge as well.
But she can speak so many languages now, and she’s got an actual home, and kids she takes care of so they don’t have to suffer like she did. If that’s the price for giving them a good life, well. She’d give up her agility in a heartbeat.
She manages to get to the top anyways, hoisting herself up onto the light stone atop the building. She can see the city stretch out around her, and she can see a new stony sphinx settling in atop a building.
Ava spends most of her time in the villa, but she has to get out sometimes. She goes to find the people who helped her, when she still called herself Sasha Racket. It’s hard, of course, so long in the past. But she tries anyway, because she has to say thank you somehow.
She lights candles for Grizzop every year, of course, but she also visited the place she remembered him mentioning once. It was… much emptier than she expected, all things considered. The city wouldn’t be built for centuries. But she looked around at the trees and the wetlands and she could nearly imagine Grizzop dashing through the underbrush.
She went to Cairo once before- they call it Memphis right now, of course- and gave her respect to Hamid. The al-Tahans weren’t wealthy yet, but she saw a few brown halfling faces who could easily have been Hamid’s great-great-great-grandparents. She wondered which one Apophis would take a liking to, and how their story would lead to a dynasty.
She didn’t go all the way to Zolf’s home in Britain, but she went to Prague. She thought about family. Connections. A ring she saw on Rakefine and Zolf both, and what it meant to people. She thought about Earhart’s ship, about Eldarion’s loyalties with the university. That was the day Ava decided to found the Harlequins.
She never knew where precisely Azu lived, but she went to the temple of Aphrodite nearest to the villa often. They call her Venus now, and the pink glow makes her think of warmth and healing and realizing that she would live to see a brighter future.
She went to so many places. She was young when she arrived here, and she’s pushing fifty now. But she’s not going to stop. She still has thanks to give, and this one she can give in person.
The gargoyle is serene, a bird beneath its claws, and it hits Ava like a pang of nostalgia. The last time she saw it, she was running away from a funeral with inhuman blood on her hands.
She sits down next to it, careful not to spook it. Even with her age, she’s still quiet enough that it doesn’t notice immediately.
When it does, she nods at it. The people here speak Coptic, not Arabic like she remembers, so she hopes it does as well. “Hello.”
It turns to her and smiles. “Greetings. What brings you here to my side, traveler?”
She shrugs, looking over the passerby. “You did me a favor once. I want to say thank you.”
The sphinx cocks its head, curious. “Whatever do you mean? I would surely remember someone like you, traveler, and we have not met.”
Ava pauses, unsure what to say. This is the first time she’s had to talk to someone she’ll know later, and it’s not like it’s easy to explain.
“A favor you’ll do in the future sometime, then. You don’t have to give me anything, I just… I want you to know I appreciate it.”
The sphinx gargoyle takes another bite of its bird, feathers dusting its stony maw. It contemplates for a moment or two, blinks, and nods. “I am glad you have found solace in me at some point. You are not from here, are you?”
Ava looks around at the brown-skinned crowd below. Obviously she isn’t from here. The villa’s sun may have tanned her skin somewhat, but she’s still very pale compared to the Egyptians who call Memphis home.
The gargoyle notices her confusion. “Rather, I suppose I should say that you are not from now.”
She jumps slightly, focuses more of her attention on it. “How did you know?”
It shrugs one stony shoulder, crossing its paws on top of each other. “The sphinx is a being of knowledge. There is a reason our most famed riddle is about time.”
Ava blinks. “But you’re not a sphinx, you’re a stone elemental that looks like one.”
It laughs, a low rumbly noise. “You are quick, traveler. Perhaps I simply saw how you recognized me and took a guess. I am glad to know that I am right.”
She curses in Latin, frustrated at having fallen for it. The sphinx cocks its head, and she curses again in Coptic to give the same effect. It laughs.
“Still, traveler, I am glad to have some conversation. You are the most interesting person I have seen thus far in Memphis.”
Ava sits for a moment in silence with it, before she gets an idea. She picks up a loose stone from the roof, and points at a passing man below holding a large bucket of water. “Bet I can hit him.”
The gargoyle shakes its head, amused. “I do not think you can, traveler.”
The throw is fantastic, she thinks. It’s a wide arc, and it lands directly in the bucket. The man jumps as it splashes him, and he looks around in surprise for who threw it.
The sphinx laughs again, and picks up its own pebble to throw. Ava grins. It’s just like old times.