Dinah glared at the girl, "Yes, can I help you?"
"Um." Erin mumbled, holding her arms over her stomach almost as if she was holding herself.
"Please. Are you going to complete your sentence or are you going to bumble about like a fool?"
Erin took a deep breath and spoke rapid fire. "Hattie told me I should ask you all about your stories and if you are happy you know, with the coven." Erin took a deep breath as she finished.
Dinah closed the book and took a drink from the glass. When she set the glass down she looked at the girl. "I was wondering. To think it took you so long. Do I frighten you?" The woman purred.
Erin thought about it for a moment. Did Dinah frighten her? No, she didn't frighten her..."No, you are probably the most unapproachable person in the coven." She spoke honestly to the librarian looking woman sitting near her.
The woman titled her head, "Interesting, unapproachable. I thought You would be scared of me." she blinked her eyes, and yellow feline eyes were staring back at Erin. Quickly they disappeared, they were normal...well, yellow...but normal eyes staring back.
Maybe she was afraid, no intimidated. "So, are you going to tell me your story?"
Dinah scrunched her brow and bit her lip. "Since you asked so nicely." She chortled. "Why do you want to know? My story that is? If I am happy with the Coven?"
The woman nodded opposite of her. "Yes. Because it will cement my will to join the coven?" Erin replied, however, it came off as a question.
Dinah tapped her claw-like nails on the wooden table staring at the girl. She took a deep breath and exhaled and then slowly she smiled. Her sharp teeth being displayed prominently.
Yes, maybe Dinah did scare Erin, a little anyways.
***
17 B.C.E
A small girl with dark hair and almond shaped yellow eyes peered over the fountain over looking the town below her.
"Momma, look." The girl pointed at the two men fighting.
"Dinah, darling that is a sword, a dangerous weapon yielded by men."
"Sword," Dinah repeated, smiling at her mother. Her mother was stunning wearing white chiton, her lips were full and her hair was dark and curly.
"You must be careful my sweet. They are powerful, but we are smarter always use that to your advantage, otherwise a swift death by man's sword will be your fate." Her mother concluded, not to scare the girl, but as a warning.
Dinah watched her mother carefully as she spoke. She would take her training and studies seriously. But, at that moment she had wanted to continue to watch the two fighting men.
Not long after that conversation with her mother she was murdered at the hands of a 'hero' and he took her mother's head as a trophy to display to all the sphinx that he had killed. By the time that Dinah had been born there were few sphinxes around, many hid from the world, with their treasure and their riddles. Many more however, where hunted and murdered to prove to men that they were heroes by slaying a beast.
Dinah didn't cry at the death of her mother, she was angry with how weak the woman was. Dinah vowed to be better than her mother, stronger and far more intelligent. She vowed to become the most intelligent being in the world. She would not be taken by mere mortals.
She kept her cover from the world. She studied and trained diligently while remaining hidden from the world, from humans in particular. Her existence was a lonely one. When she had prepared enough she entered the world again. This was over four centuries after she had seen the two men fighting with their swords.
Dinah went to the nearest human town. Amazed at the size, as it had surely grown in over the 400 years while she had been away. She smiled to herself and continued her journey into town. Dinah was a grown woman now, a mature sphinx. Now was the time for her to set off on her pilgrimage to see the great sphinx and for her pledge.
From the city of Rasheed, she made her trek down the Nile to Giza, to pay homage to the first of their kind, the great stone sphinx. The city was a bustling, people where busy moving about their small and insignificant lives. One human bumped into the woman with yellow eyes, mumbled an apology and then headed back to their own little world. The woman cleaned off her shoulder and made her way towards the monument.
Finally she thought to herself, she had made it. With the cover of night (she had absolutely no trouble seeing in the dark) she made her way to the great sphinx. Taking her hand and setting it on the stone paw she whispered her riddle, where her finger was touching light shot up through the stone and radiated throughout the sphinx.
Her riddle had been accepted, she had been accepted. Dinah took a step back and for the first time in a long time she had glee in her heart and her future was wide open.
However, what the young sphinx did not know is that she had been seen and her power witnessed.