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It takes a few years for things to settle down. Sasha was never one for history so she doesn’t know exactly when it’ll be safe to do what needs to be done. She hopes she’s not going to be eighty or something, making the trip from Italy to Cairo wouldn’t be fun as a hobbling old woman, but in the end it’s about ten years after the fall when the meritocrats (the dragons, people call them, she doesn’t know when the real name will catch on) settle over their prospective domains.
Cicero promises to look after the business while she’s gone. She trusts him. Kind of. He’s a friend, the only other person who knows some of what happened, the only person who remembers Grizzop (the only other person in the entire world who knows that Grizzop existed, the only person in the entire world who has some sort of connection to her past).
She doesn’t bother trying to find magical transportation. Magic is severely regulated in the aftermath of Rome’s destruction and she doesn’t trust it anyway. She takes a ship to Egypt and approaches what will one day be Cairo overland and by river. They call it Memphis, these days.
Of course none of it looks anything like she remembers but that’s all right. She doesn’t have to sneak. She belongs here, now, above ground, an upstanding business woman who knows people who know people, and she doesn’t even need to carry more than six daggers at a time (she doesn’t need to, but of course she does, among them, the tiny adamantine one, goblin sized, always close to her heart).
You are more important than a THING!
She rides a camel out to where Apophis has made his nest. There’s no building there, not yet, no officers of the Apophis Office, but he’s safe enough. The world is still too scared to think of trying to attack a dragon and since they’ve not attacked any other cities, only gently tried to steer the races towards peace and prosperity, everyone simply pretends they are not there.
Sasha is not afraid. Sasha remembers warm golden eyes (so similar to Hamid’s) and burnished brass scales and the gift of her life returned.
She hears the rumbling of his breath from several miles away, sees the glint of his scales. The camel she is riding goes rigid with terror and refuses to carry her, so she takes the last part of the journey on foot, keeping the burning sun off her skin with a fold of the cloak she wears.
Apophis has grown some, since she saw him in the pit, but is still smaller than the dragon she remembers from the future. As she approaches, he curls his massive head around and fixes her with one eye, which blinks slowly.
“Uh. Hi,” she says, giving him a little wave. “Apophis? That’s your name, right?”
The dragon does not respond and she has no way to gauge expressions. It was easier when he looked mostly human.
“I ah… have a strange kind of… story… to tell you? I guess?”
There is a rumble and a gush of wind that Sasha realises, with a small thrill of terror, is Apophis sniffing her.
“You smell of magic,” he rumbles, and his voice isn’t as low as it was in the future, but it is still menacing. Sasha swallows and takes a hasty step back, holding up her hands.
“I’m not!” she squeaks. “Magic I mean. I’m not magic. Promise. Uh. Had a lot of… magic stuff done to me, over the years, yeah, maybe that’s… maybe that’s what you smell?”
The massive head moves a little closer to her and the eye narrows slightly. “You are out of time,” he says. “Not of this stream. You have been ripped from the world and forced back into it in the wrong place.”
“Got all that from one sniff?” Sasha says, laughing weakly.
“You should not be here.”
Sasha swallows remembering the feeling of fingers slipping through hers, remembers falling, falling through two thousand years. “Didn’t... exactly have a choice, mate,” she says.
Apophis contemplates her and the heat from his gaze does not burn.
“No other humans have dared to approach me,” Apophis says.
“Well you’re pretty scary,” Sasha points out.
“Yet you are not afraid.”
Sasha makes a small gesture with her hands. “Eh,” she says. “We’ve met before. And you were bigger then. At least when you were a dragon you were.”
Apophis tilts his head, and Sasha has an absurd moment where she remembers Brutor doing the same thing, looking up at Bertie, trying to understand. She’d nearly said something to the damned dog back then, told it not to bother. But Apophis isn’t Brutor, and Sasha definitely isn’t Bertie. “Explain,” Apophis says.
So Sasha tells him.
The dragon sits for a long time in silence when she is done, and she wonders if she is going to be eaten, or simply ignored.
“Time is immutable,” Apophis tells her, finally. “I cannot change this.”
“No, I know,” Sasha says. She didn’t know. And perhaps she’d kept a tiny kernel of hope in the depths of her heart but it doesn’t hurt to let it die. Much. “I didn’t want you to.”
“Then why have you come here at all?”
Sasha remembers the feeling of a spear going through her shoulder. Remembers dying and then not and her friend with his arm outstretched, literally yanking her back from death because he would not let her go.
She remembers Grizzop, standing straight and defiant in the face of pure evil.
Much obliged.
“They don’t know what happened,” Sasha says. “They probably just think we died. And that’s okay, you know? We kind of did. Die I mean. I mean I’m going to be dead when they’re born. Unless something weird happens. Which, you know, given how much weird has happened so far isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility but you know what I mean, right?”
Apophis blinks, then makes a sound that Sasha hopes is a chuckle.
“I just want them to know that he died well,” Sasha says then, drawing in a shaky breath. “That he died doing what he does best. That he saved me… again. .. and he got his guy, he finished the hunt, you know? And that Artemis… that Artemis has him now and… and he d-did good.” She is crying now, tears drip down on her hands as she reaches into her bag and pulls out Grizzop’s bow and quiver. “And I dunno even if these’ll last two thousand years but they should probably go t-to…to his friends. To our friends. Something to remember him by, yeah?”
“You would ask me to care for them for two thousand years?”
“Well, you’re a dragon, ain’t you?” Sasha wipes her nose but the tears don’t stop falling. “You hoard things. Put ‘em in your hoard.”
Apophis definitely laughs then.
#
An age passes, and Apophis waits.
#
They come to him as he knew they would. Oscar Wilde and Saira present them, and Apophis feels the weight of a promise two thousand years old settle in his heart.
His descendant, tiny and full of power and potential. Hamid. The Paladin of Aphrodite. Azu. The Paladin of Artemis. Grizzop.
And Sasha.
The memories of dragons are like the bones of the earth, deep and strong and ages old. Apophis was barely more than a child when he first saw her, but now he can see the traces of the woman she will become, despite the deathly pallor of her skin, despite the hesitation in her voice as she speaks. He has kept the heart of Aphrodite close to him for this moment, sat it in the centre of his city (his hoard) so he would have the chance to help her, the first human who ever spoke to him with any degree of kindness. The first human who made him believe the world was worth preserving.
He makes arrangements, once they are gone, for the items he has kept for two thousand years to be delivered to Hamid’s family, for them to collect when they return.
Something to help them remember their friends.