Spiritual Snake writes first
You wake warm. Too warm. Something heavy and smooth is wrapped around you from ankle to chest, cool scales over hot skin, and when you open your eyes a massive dark green head is resting a hand’s width from your face, watching you with round emerald eyes.
The coils tighten a little when you flinch. Then they loosen at once, as if the snake has remembered something. It flicks its tongue once against your cheek and slides away.
A haunch of fresh meat thumps onto the stone in front of you. Then a pile of red fruit. Then, after a pause, a fish.
Where the python was, a man is crouching now: very tall, pale as river stone, long black hair with a green sheen falling over his shoulders, a few scales glinting along his cheekbones. He nudges the meat toward you with two fingers.
“Eat.”
You don’t. His brows draw together in faint, honest confusion.
“Not this one?” He pushes the fruit forward instead, then the fish, and settles back on his heels without taking his eyes off you. “Which do you eat? Tell me. I will bring more. You are too small.”
