To say that she liked this place, that would be an untruth. It was not as solemn as the already decades- or centuries-old tombs she had once called home, warmed from the outside in by the hot Egyptian sun. Nowhere else on this Earth rose the mountains of sand that could just as easily swallow a man whole than not and Khepri had seen many a time, the folly of man. The world was cruel but to those that gave it the respect and reverence it desired, it was also fair. Hubris was always punished and hubris was the greatest fault of mankind. Hundreds of centuries had given Khepri much insight into humanity, but even her observations were skewed and subjective. Her eyes were clouded by her nature, and so she was quick to see their misgivings and slow to acknowledge their gifts.
Overhead, a rolling thunder caught her attention and her golden eyes flicked up to study the sky which had, if her memory served her still, shown no signs of a storm so close. It had been heavy with darkness but not with cloud and Khepri slipped to the ground, fluidly shedding her human skin and reverting back to her natural one. Slithering quickly along the ground, she weaved expertly through the legs of the trapped wanderers. Their quick gasps of terror and and shrill shrieks drew a laugh from her, insomuch as a cobra could laugh. The hissing sound only further agitated the frightened guests and in a playful show, she coiled back and fanned her hood and watched as the small group of them nearly trampled their own to get away.
Khepri resumed her investigation, following the sounds of water and thunder to the river. Once more, her judgement of her surroundings were harsh as this river could not measure up to the Nile she had mapped from one end to the other. Nothing could compare with the might and power of the Nile and Khepri did miss it as she missed most of of her homeland. She had never considered herself to be one so easily stricken with homesickness, but this hollowness in her chest was new and she longed for the burning sands and unforgiving landscape more than ever.
As she neared the bank, the taste of blood in the air settled upon her tongue and she traced that invisible pull to where the viscera lay, lapped by the disturbed water of the river. Nearby was a man, dripping wet but he was no victim, Khepri could see that. She kept her distance from the river's edge, a strong enough swimmer but no desire to test the limits of that skill. Instead, she shed once more and again was human though need not worry about clothes as her discarded snakeskin returned to the shape of what she had been wearing before.
"A waste," Khepri mused in distantly accented English as she regarded the entrails left by the shore. "Would you mind?" Her open hand gestured to them but she made no motion to get closer, it hadn't been her kill and she was no thief. While intestines had never been a favorite and she so rarely prayed to Serket, it was preferable to finding something else worth biting into here.