10-22-2019, 12:35 PM
It merely exists.
There’s a breath and a heartbeat. There is hunger roiling in its stomach and an unsatisfied thirst that claws its throat. It exists, but it isn’t sure as what.
You’re born, its mother exclaimed, proud to participate in populating the world and throwing another shadow into the creeping darkness. Now live, she advised coolly. Thrive.
It regarded her quietly, thoughtfully. Its first instinct was to nurse, but she hissed and claimed that meal wasn’t fit for her own children. It didn’t understand, but it shrank from her touch until its body shed its legs and hair to reveal a python coiled in front of her. A venomous smile stretched across her lips then as she shouted to the air, ”Mother of monsters!” Malice flashed in her eyes. A monster, it thought. I am a monster.
Obediently, it fled by slithering across the meadow and into the distant forest where it camouflaged with the dappled sunlight and fallen leaves. Hunger still gripped its appetite, but the necessity of milk shifted with this new body. It receded until something darker, something primal, churned in its gut. It followed this new instinct, and devoured unattended eggs, squirrels, smaller snakes. It fed and fed and fed with this new craving. Only once satisfied did it nestle quietly into the leaf bed to rest overnight.
With the sun’s crowning, it rises. Its tongue flickers. It doesn’t know what it is, or how to revert to what it once was. It didn’t know what it was born as, not when its mother stared down at it with serpent scales tracing her body and fangs dipping below her lips. She was a hybrid, and so must it be as well.
It glides along the forest floor until a gnarled oak stands sentinel above. With its body coiled tightly at its trunk, it watches and waits with a mind that darts and reels with only two certainties. Survive and eat.
There’s a breath and a heartbeat. There is hunger roiling in its stomach and an unsatisfied thirst that claws its throat. It exists, but it isn’t sure as what.
You’re born, its mother exclaimed, proud to participate in populating the world and throwing another shadow into the creeping darkness. Now live, she advised coolly. Thrive.
It regarded her quietly, thoughtfully. Its first instinct was to nurse, but she hissed and claimed that meal wasn’t fit for her own children. It didn’t understand, but it shrank from her touch until its body shed its legs and hair to reveal a python coiled in front of her. A venomous smile stretched across her lips then as she shouted to the air, ”Mother of monsters!” Malice flashed in her eyes. A monster, it thought. I am a monster.
Obediently, it fled by slithering across the meadow and into the distant forest where it camouflaged with the dappled sunlight and fallen leaves. Hunger still gripped its appetite, but the necessity of milk shifted with this new body. It receded until something darker, something primal, churned in its gut. It followed this new instinct, and devoured unattended eggs, squirrels, smaller snakes. It fed and fed and fed with this new craving. Only once satisfied did it nestle quietly into the leaf bed to rest overnight.
With the sun’s crowning, it rises. Its tongue flickers. It doesn’t know what it is, or how to revert to what it once was. It didn’t know what it was born as, not when its mother stared down at it with serpent scales tracing her body and fangs dipping below her lips. She was a hybrid, and so must it be as well.
It glides along the forest floor until a gnarled oak stands sentinel above. With its body coiled tightly at its trunk, it watches and waits with a mind that darts and reels with only two certainties. Survive and eat.