For a moment, Khepri’s gold eyes followed the man as he darted inside with the scroll. Once he slipped out of slight, Khepri lowered herself down to the ground, legs crossed under her. Before she sat, she had placed her scarf down, folded over a few times, as a barrier between her and the cold ground. It still sapped a little of her warmth, but not nearly as badly as it would have if she had been touching the fine dirt directly.
Left to herself for those few moments, Khepri took to studying the glassware on the low table, turning them over in her hands, careful not to drop them. There wasn’t anything particularly fascinating about any of them, but she looked at them all with the same intensity as if she could glean a history from the clear glass. Many centuries ago, she had known a young woman who could accomplish just that. Khepri forgot what she had called her ability, but she could sit for hours listening to her describe the life of inanimate objects as if she were there. More than a handful of times, she had brought the psychic items in the hopes she would be able to tell her something worthwhile. Oftentimes, she did.
Khepri remembered when the young girl had died. It was premature, violent. She had hunted down her murderer and watched him slowly suffocate to death. His death, like all the others Khepri had orchestrated, was only a meager, hollow form of justice. It was an eye for an eye, but it was never enough.
Shaking off her thoughts as her host returned, Khepri accepted the drink he offered to her though she didn’t try it immediately. For the briefest of seconds, her forked tongue flickered out, testing the air to check for anything that would do her any harm. Sensing nothing, she brought the glass to her lips and tested the drink, finding it much more pleasant than what had passed for alcohol when she was younger. “It is not often I find someone who truly values knowledge. And to think, I would find it in a place like this.”