Moonshine

Chapter 7- Parelthón

παρελθόν: parelthón
Greek
past
-

She must have been hallucinating.
It wouldn't be a surprise, if she was being honest. Sanya was barely surviving, on the brink, and her dreams were worse than ever. Of course her conscious moments would be marred by imagined visions.

"No, you are not hallucinating." The Sphinx said, with a look of long-suffering on her face. Her lion tail swung behind her, as she neared the girl who stood in front of her. "I know you."

She still wasn't sure if the creature was real, despite her words. Perhaps her eyesight had entirely abandoned her, and this was simply her brain's way of making up for the sightlessness.
The Sphinx looked real, though- as strong and vigorous as any wild lion, and- though Sanya stood taller than her- she felt almost small compared to the might of the creature before her.
"I know you, too." Oedipus's tale had been one of the first myths she'd ever read. She had probably been too young for such a story- but, well, it hadn't stopped her. "You came to my husband, once."
The Sphinx had been the one who'd told Edmund that he would love her and grieve her. She'd thought it meant she might die in battle, fighting the giants.
She would have preferred if that had actually happened. It would've been easier on her.

"Yes. I never forget a human who has encountered me." The Sphinx cocked her head. "King Edmund answered two of my riddles. Such has never been done before."

"Before that happened, I had thought you spoke only the one riddle."
What had it been- Sanya couldn't quite recall. But the answer had been man.

"Usually, yes. But sometimes I-" The Sphinx did not smile, but a look of wicked glee passed her face, "I like to challenge myself. See just how far I can stretch my skills and knowledge."

She gripped her sword tight, blood dripping off the blade and down to the forest floor. Some blood was her own, some was of the Strix birds that had attacked her while she had been asleep against a tree. They had been one of many animals- were they animals, or creatures?- who had attacked her.
"And you kill the people who can't live up to you?"

"Not often. I prefer to take a limb or two." The Sphinx shrugged. "Knowledge is power, they say. And the powerful feed on the weak, but I find that human flesh is too sweet. However, when your husband happened upon me, I was cursed. If he had answered wrongly, I'd have been compelled to devour him. But his answers were firm and true, and my curse was lifted."

"Out of respect to him, perhaps you could let me go, then." She was rather sure she had not seen the last of the Strix, and she would prefer to be far away from this section of the garden. Who knows what else dwelled here- if only she had Seraphina's perceptiveness. She would've kept herself safer from danger, if she had. "I am not good at riddles, at all. And, I can assure you I taste extremely bad."
She was glad that she wasn't as plump as she had been, that she most likely looked sickly and underfed- because she was such. She wasn't the nutritious meal she would've been a millennia ago.

The Sphinx wrinkled her nose, "Your body certainly does smell. I would never have thought it was a human I smelt- I came to you because your blood smelled like God's blood."

Oh, she did need a bath, didn't she?
"The Gods haven't been here for a long time, I heard."

"No. They haven't."

"Why are you here, then?"

"I'm not a God, True Queen." She shook her head, before sitting down on her hind legs, her eagle's wings spread behind her. "I am a mere creature, fractured with divine knowledge. And I am not the only beast who dwells in these parts of Neráida."