Head back to long-ago, south of this position
When the pony dispositions are unkindly
Surviving was more the order of the day than life and
The oracles in cults did the bulk of the rhyming
It’s not all walking sideways,
Scrawl on tri-angular halls every Friday -
Nights laid in Nile basin salt deposits
Onto this province of sand comes a monster mauling
Sphinx specifically
Town square stretching wings, who's this,
Listen up, message that you better get in tune with
I need intellectual amusements
Or vessels you’re entombed in will never get to Duat
Back east, ponies used to honor my game-den
When death came, it took me far too long to replace them
I took to enslavement, city is my stomping ground,
Later I can put you through your paces, I'm walking now

No response to this story.
Night falls, hope problems can dissolve in the morning,
By the pyramid, jackal-headed gods are cavorting
The Sphinx plays quite hard but her office is sporting
She laughs, town plays along, hope the trouble ends
Soon all they'll have left to boast of is rubble then
Each riddle and rhyme, every koan and puzzle
She knows, every mean by which a man could joke or befuddle
Open and subtle, wise pharaoh used to speak softly
Entered in the pyramid and left with his ka free
Hisan's no i-Sabbah either
A nameless town suffers now for want of teachers
Only one mare who's not on bleachers
Sleepwalker, she come at night, dodging creatures
As ever, the contest's a game of riddles
And they'll play it til the dawn comes to make things simple

Small, made of sand, but it's wet in
It has a mouth and a neck but it's headless

A bottle - There at every mortal beginning
Lighter than feathers but I can't be held for more than a minute

Breath - I got a head and a tail but I can't walk
Given for everything, but taking me's against laws

Coin - free, but lost I cost everything
Shining in the dark, cept even there I can't be seen

Hope - I'm what the poor have and rich need,
Greater than a Sphinx, older than time and glitch free

Nothing - birds carry me to all places
I can inspire ponies, end wars and dissolve nations

A quill - made of bone, I have many teeth
And they're always bared, but the mares don't lose any sleep

A comb - imagine a god with gold sword
How do you escape if the room you're in has no doors?

That's the last she can ask before the gold morn
Sphinx smirks, hey, that one's new but it's no thorn
No doors, it’s how escaping is meant
You let the sword come cus the only way out is death.
Then moves with instinct, as one who's often battling
Somnambula holds up a hoof, wrong answer, rattle fiend
Sphinx stops, don't know how she lost, this is baffling
Imagine a room. How to get out? Stop imagining.
Feel a hitch in her throat
Sphinx can still kill, tell them that she quit and was smote
Looking in the eyes there, sitting in hope
And it turns out maybe all that wisdom isn't for show
It's like riddles to jokes, it's like Laughter from Hope
Sphinx turns, flaps her wings up through the rafters and goes
For a nameless town one mare had to gamble her life
Now Somnambula the open-eyed can gambol in time