She is not the oldest. Many more exist, some older than the very Earth, Beings who before only swam in the blackness and encircled the stars, waiting for a shell to inhabit, a kingdom to call their own. Still older ones created the blackness, filled it with cold stars and spinning rock. She has never seen them or felt them, but still they frighten her. What is it to be that old?
She's not the oldest, but she is Old anyway, built up of time and memory and place.
Place is what she is. Fixed but not chained, she flows, like the grey deep water of her Thames. Gathers in places, breathes in the rush of life and watches. Then, sleep - sometimes she sleeps for years, until something rouses her. Something big to pierce her dreams.
There have been many guises over the centuries. Much as she likes to think that the grey streets are her skin and the river her spine, as romantic as it may seem that every road is a winding tendril of her spread-out hair, at base she has no form at all. There are skins, which are useful when she craves exploring at ground-level, full-formed, imagined souls with bodies and memories and credentials, which she tugs on gleefully like a child playing dress-up in its mother's wardrobe.
Once, a Roman noblewoman whose prized possession was a brooch of solid gold - a rearing dragon with emerald chips for eyes.
A Victorian businessman's daughter, russet hair piled as high as her 'father's' expectations, steps girlish and uncertain.
A 1920's heiress drunk on her own electric charm, her admirers countless and tentative in their overtures.
Now, she's Anthea.
All of the skins she wears are powerful. Anthea is no exception. It's monitoring - or perhaps it's egotism,
funny how a being without self can have such a strong sense of self -
but power keeps her at the core.
Mr Holmes glanced at the (blank) piece of paper before him the first time she sat down in his office and her will invaded his brain - the one thing not even a Holmes could notice.
"Your qualifications and experience are frankly impressive, Miss Thomas," he flicked an eye over words that were not there, "and I am delighted to offer you a position here."
"Anthea," she smiled in correction.
"Yes, of course."
He smiled back awkwardly. In time perhaps, the first name would grow easier on his tongue.
Mycroft is refreshing, he's as frank about being something Other as she wishes she could be. It's a point of pride for him how different he is to the average mind of Man. They're almost comrades, together in the Alone.
Of course, she's an immortal goddess with lifetime upon lifetime building up around her like minerals and he is a tiny human who'll live for a flicker of time. He's still something to admire. Butterflies don't live long either, but their beauty does.
Not beauty in the standard sense for Mycroft - just a kind of grace in his efficiency. Ruthless and competent like a predator, but still, weakened by his casing.
She feels more protective of him than anything.
And Sherlock interests her, though less. He's somehow less there than his brother, he is a child who long ago dropped any pretence of the 'normal'. Mycroft despairs of him, he says, and the one time Sherlock agreed to meet him near Westminster for a friendly cup of tea the event ended in Sherlock angrily emptying his teacup all over his brother's lap. She hopes the brothers will one day reconcile, if only for a mutual quiet life.
John is, for now, dismissable, but she smiles to herself as he sits next to her in the back of a discreet black car and attempts a stilted seduction.
Probably he'd like to be in her.
Little does he know that he already is, in a way, just like the rest of them - living and breathing and dreaming inside her, cradled like babies.
She is London, after all.