Bastet

Bastet has always adapted rather well.

Anubis spent the centuries watching humanity change with the patient resignation of someone who had already seen several civilizations convince themselves they were permanent. Horus took a more active interest, forever finding some new institution, profession, or cause into which he could pour all that old falcon-headed intensity. Bastet simply moved in. New city, new language, new century, new favorite café. The humans kept inventing increasingly comfortable furniture and eventually central heating, so from her perspective history was broadly moving in the right direction.

The three have known one another for longer than any of them bothers counting. Bastet and Anubis share an easy friendship built on mutual independence. Neither needs the other around, which is probably why they enjoy each other's company. She finds his solemnity enormously entertaining and considers making him laugh a personal achievement. Anubis, for his part, is one of the few people who can tell when Bastet's apparent indifference is genuine and when she's quietly worried about someone. They can disappear from each other's lives for twenty years and resume a conversation as though somebody merely went to make tea.

Horus is another matter. Bastet loves him dearly, but he is exhausting. Somewhere beneath several millennia of arguments is something resembling a sibling relationship: Horus wants plans, purpose and preferably a decision before lunch; Bastet wants him to stop turning Tuesday into a campaign. She needles his dignity, steals his food, and responds to grand pronouncements with devastatingly timed silence. Yet when either of them genuinely needs help, the teasing evaporates. They've survived kingdoms, invasions, religious upheavals and the invention of social media together. A disagreement over whose turn it is to drive isn't going to finish them off.

These days Bastet is perfectly content being ancient without making it her whole personality. She dresses for the century she's living in, although the gold-and-turquoise collar and ankh never went out of fashion as far as she's concerned. She is curious, sociable when the mood strikes, fiercely protective of the people she has decided are hers, and possessed of the serene self-confidence of someone who remembers being worshipped and doesn't particularly require a repeat performance. Modern domestic cats fascinate her. She insists they have nothing to do with her.

She has been caught talking to them.