With the warm, dry heat of the Egyptian sun on her skin, Khepri knew that she was home. They had been parted for some time, wanderlust and contracts having kept her from returning but years could not prevent her homeland's pull on her soul to return. Khepri enjoyed her travels but nothing compared to Egypt in her eyes. The sea of dunes, the strength of the sun, the shimmer of the Nile.
Immediately upon her return, Menakure had called to her and she had settled into her centuries-old nest, and added to it souvenirs of her excursions away. Trinkets, some new and some older than her, lined the cavernous space beneath the great tomb. Khepri perused them and lost herself to old memories and old friends. Sentimentality was not a trait she was laden with, but she could see the value in some things and kept them here.
Though the high sun of an Egyptian afternoon typically met her already asleep, the excitement of being home kept her awake and she took to wandering. In the few years since she had been here last, the atmosphere had changed but it continued to flourish on the banks of the Nile, a land far too stubborn and weathered to be beaten down by war. Eventually, she found her way down to the banks of great river and coiled atop a worn rock. The heat sunk into her and she felt as if she was being brought back to life, as if the sun here was unlike the one that shone down upon any other country. It was a folly, she knew, but her biases were hers and she would not hear an argument.
For hours she rested there, the rush of the river and the occasional grunt of a hippopotamus or growl of a hungry crocodile the only soundtrack to her repose. However, a change in the scent of the air caught her attention. Opening her eyes, she saw him, some fool wading into the river and she hissed something that could have been a laugh if she had been in her human form. Slipping off the rock, she shifted back into her human form as she approached the edge of the water though she had enough sense not to go in. Standing on the bank, she regarded the man with an amused disbelief. Closer now, she could sense that he was not human, but a fool still nonetheless.
"If the current does not take you, I believe the river cow shall. Is it death you seek, my friend?"