Since we have not met before, I had better introduce myself properly. My name is lapis, like the

blue stone. That's because my eyes are beautifully blue, and I am a cat. Not just any cat, but a magical cat.

Well, to tell you the truth, I am still training to be a magical cat,

but I plan to be brilliant at magic one day. I live a long time before you will be born,

more than two and a half thousand years before you will even be thought of, my country is Egypt,

but I am told that you will call it ancient Egypt. I am here to tell you stories.

The subject of my tales is eternally fascinating.

They are all about me.

What's that?

Someone is asking how it is that if I am truly ancient Egyptian, that you can hear my voice. Should I not be a mummified cat by now?

Shouldn't my stories have been written in pretty picture words called hieroglyphics, inscribed on scrolls for papyrus, torn by time into thousands of teeny shreds and blown around by the

African winds along with the sands of the deserts. Well, it is a good question.

Yes, I live a long time before you

and Eamon, the priest's scribe, does write down my stories,

and being a skilled magician, naturally he uses magical talking letters

that's how i can speak to you directly down the millennia what's that you're saying now

is millennia a word oh so you are asking me, an ancient Egyptian cat, to explain English to you now, are you?

Well, little one, the perfectly good word millennia means thousands of years.

You kids of the future think that we couldn't do anything without your modern technology.

Yes, technology is sort of smart, but let me tell you, it is nothing compared to magic of the past.

And the most magical time and place ever was in Purbast on the River Nile.

Some people will tell you that Memphis is the capital of magic.

...