This place is mesmerizing. It's taking her a long time to get from place to place because she keeps stopping to wander through courtyards and dip her hands in streams and admire incidental features of the architecture.

Eventually she finds herself in a sort of grove or orchard, surrounded by huge old trees—

—and there's a rather large shadow moving amid the branches, high enough that she can't quite see any details beyond 'quick' and 'dark' and 'big'.

She freezes.

That was...large. And menacing. Maybe the lovely palace doesn't like her so much?

(Or maybe it likes her a lot?)

The large menacing shadow pauses, then circles back. A pair of blazing green-gold eyes peer down at her between the leaves.

She stares up, transfixed.

"...hi."

"What are you doing here?"

It—he—sounds surprisingly human, and more perplexed than anything. (Was that a flash of shining white fangs when he spoke?)

"Uh...I walked in, and...a tray gave me a blanket."

Did she just imagine the teeth...?

"You have really nice eyes."

...he blinks confusedly at her.

"...Thank you...? The valley's never done that before."

"Had somebody compliment you on your eyes?"

"...wait, nobody else can get in here?"

"Not since the empire fell," he agrees, to the second thing.

"...what."

There is a movement in the leaves which looks suspiciously like a long swishing tail.

"What part of that do you need explained?"

"The...twenty centuries ago empire?"

"Yes. That one."

"And you've been alive all this time? –Who else is in here?"

"Just me and the valley."

"...can you get out?"

Snort. "No."

Oh. That's upsetting.

But...she doesn't know whether this is the kind of person who needs other people.

"I'm even more confused about why it let me in, now."

"It's pretty confusing."

"Is this the part where you tear me to pieces, or where you come down and say hi?"

"I'm not planning to tear you to pieces. That would be a terrible waste of the first visitor I've had in two thousand years."

He pauses for a moment, considering, and then shifts sideways and swings down and drops out of the crown of the tree onto a sturdy branch, still well over her head, but with no concealing veil of leaves.

In the sunlight, the dark shadow of his body is revealed to be... mostly human in shape, if you omit the long lizardlike tail; but covered in iridescent black scales, glimmering red-orange-gold over an elusive underlayer of blue-purple-green. The scales vary widely in size, from big sturdy plates over the tops of his shoulders to something more like a lizard's pebbled skin on his hands and face. And yes, those were definitely fangs, and he's got claws to match; and if the perspective isn't playing tricks on her, he must be more than twice her height.

She stares at him in awe.

“...oh.”