Apophis

“Sorry about your face, dude,” I said. The reporter sat on the ledge where I had placed him, his legs dangling, more or less eye to eye with me. A sheen of antibiotic ointment glistened from the top of his forehead to where his eyebrows should have been. A strip of gauze was wrapped around his left hand, the one he had shielded his face with.

“I shouldn’t have startled you. My bad.” he said. “Just reflex on your part.” He patted the top of the case next to him, white with a red cross on top. “Good thing I brought this.”

I stretched my wings to their full length and refolded them carefully. “I’ve got to give you props for finding me. How’d you do it?”

The reporter preened.  “I’d been checking out years of stories and legends. I figured there were so many, there must be some truth to them. Where there’s smoke there’s fire. So to speak.” He smiled and blinked his lashless eyes.

At least he still had a sense of humor. “So, what led you here?”

“I just followed the clues in the story. There are only so many caves near the sea. I’ve been looking for you for over 5 years now.” He rummaged in his messenger bag, pulled out a spiral-bound notebook and flipped it open.

“Persistent,” I said, “and ballsy.” I curled my tail around my back legs and settled comfortably, being sure to keep my snout pointed downward. I didn’t want to cook the guy. “Anyway, what do you want to know? It’s the least I can do.”

He cleared his throat and licked the tip of his Blackwing 602 pencil. “Did you really make friends with ….?”

“Just stop right there.” I held up my right front talon. “I don’t even want to hear his name. His story is mostly bullshit,” I said, pointing at him with a curved claw. “I can’t believe you people bought it.” Smoke started to come out of my nostrils at the mere thought of that ridiculous story.

The reporter scooted backward until he hit the cave wall, coughing. “So, what really happened?” He waved his hand to clear the air.

“Well, we were friends. For a while. He wasn’t afraid, I was curious, and it was interesting to get that close to a human.” I twitched my tail in annoyance. “But the details are all wrong. For starters, I don’t ‘frolic’.” I shook my head. “Can you imagine me ‘frolicking’? Really!” I practiced extending and retracting my front claws, but stopped when I saw the reporter trying to disappear into the wall. “Sorry.”

He picked up his notebook and pencil from where he had dropped them and tried to refocus. “You do have a certain gravitas. But didn’t you frolic as a youngster?”

“No frolicking.” I focused on him and narrowed my eyes, making the red irises glow. “Maybe some flight practice.  And swimming. We’re all very good swimmers. In fact, I taught him to swim.”

“I didn’t know that.” He scribbled some notes. “That explains the location of the cave. How about the strings and sealing wax?”

“Seriously man?”

“Never mind.” He crossed out something in the notebook. “What about the travels? He rode on your tail?”

“Well, that part was true. I could barely feel him up there. And the kings and princes bowing? Absolutely happened.” I let loose a proud burst of flame, careful to aim it at the ceiling away from the reporter.

“Thanks for being so straight with me. Now we come to the most important part – he stopped coming and you ceased your fearless roar.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine that.”

“That’s because it didn’t happen! The little bastard spread that lie to cover the fact that I sent him away,” I said, pointing at my chest for emphasis. “I got tired of him clinging and whining, I was bored, and I was definitely done with him.” Smoke drifted from my nostrils again. I moved farther away from the reporter.

“So, your green scales didn’t fall like rain, you didn’t sadly slip into your cave?” He yelled to cover the increased distance.

“Hell no! Scales don’t just fall off. They get shed and replaced slowly. I guess he was trying to make a rhyme. Idiot!” I snorted and accidentally shot a flame toward the reporter, making him cringe. “Sorry. Anyway, I had a good reason to go back to my cave. I had a hot little female I’d been seeing, so ‘slipped sadly’ doesn’t exactly describe how I left. Quite the opposite.” I bared my teeth in an approximation of a human smile, making the reporter squeeze his eyes shut and cover his head. “Sorry. Anything else you need to know?”

“No, that should about do it. Thanks. There’s gonna be a bidding war over this interview. I’m holding out for Rolling Stone.” He made some final notes and stuffed his notebook back in the messenger bag. He added his first aid kit and stood up. “Could you let me down now please?”

I moved slowly, wary of startling him yet again. I stood next to the ledge, and he climbed on my back and down my scales to the ground. I turned and barred his way, lowering my head to meet his eyes. “One last thing. He mangled my name in his silly story. The name’s Apophis. A-P-O-P-H-I-S  Emphasis on the second syllable.”

The reporter dug out his notebook and wrote it down. “Anything else you want to add?”

“Just get it right this time.” I was weary of the conversation. Humans were so exhausting.

The reporter scurried toward the entrance to the cave, apparently as eager to end the interview as I was. From a safe distance he paused, grinned, and called out “Thanks, Puff!”

“APOPHIS!”