[ ID 1: Twitter thread by Kayla Ancrum ✨ @/KaylaAncrum, and Cyberpunk Plato, @/CyberpunkP(cuts off), started on January 20, 2024, which reads:
1) @/KaylaAncrum: Man who falls in love with a sphynx and solves her riddles daily, in spite of the threat to his life.
The boon he requests every night is to sleep by her side in the warm sand and wake up safe. As he grows old, then forgetful, she reconfigures her riddles to accept any answer.
2) @/KaylaAncrum: Idk I just think it would be neat. Nice Ace love story.
I just think the parallel of him working hard and studying to be able to solve her riddles in his youth, While she struggles to think up riddles he couldn't possibly lose in his final years, is romantic.
3) @/KaylaAncrum: Sad ending. I think he would die in his sleep beside her and she would eat him in a very Where The Wild Things Are “I'll eat you up I love you so" Way.
Keep his bones, bleached white in the sun. Wear them maybe. The only man who mattered.
4) @/KaylaAncrum: There has to be a night, where he finally gets one wrong. Where he's already made his bed and lay his grey head down, eyes closed. After he answers, her lion ears prick up and she thinks
"Ah. This is the beginning of the end."
And thinks hard all night until his answer is right
5) @/KaylaAncrum: I also kind of like the idea that other people still come and challenge her riddles and fail and she eats them while he just stands there, petting her shoulder, while they beg for their lives.
Monster (literal)/ Monster (figurative) Romance.
6) @/CyberpunkP(cuts off): Could do a kind of tragic parallel with real world dementia patients as the last and hardest riddles are
"Do you remember what day it is?"
[ ID 2: Digital, semi realistic artwork of a Sphinx (a creature with a lion's body, human woman's head and wings) climbing downwards while reaching her paw down to a tiny, frail human figure resting on the ground, with signs of aging. The sphinx looks upset. Text around her body, going down with her, reads:
"A riddle once more given
To delight your addled thoughts
And usher forth the quiet night
In which your head lay naught
Nor shrubs and brittle reed
But upon the soft sands shifting
"It creeps out from mine lovely mouth
And travels down mine tail
To land within your open palms
Held aloft in desperate want
Bring recognition to your face
All the days of which we've passed
Side by side, amongst the sands
And the love that we've amassed
Let this riddle now remind you
Of your cunning and your guile
The softness you once found
Within the sharpness of my smile"
May seem nothing but a ploy
For they know nothing of my love
For they know nothing of my joy
To others, may seem simple,
But dear one, please do tell me"
