Limitless Evolution As a Snake

He doesn’t look down. Okay. Okay. I’m doing this. Fifth inch. Sixth. The prosciutto smell is stronger up here, rich and fatty and absolutely criminal, and my brain has basically stopped processing anything else. Threat assessment? Gone. Escape route? Not a thought. All I have is salt, pork fat, rosemary, and the desperate animal certainty that I will eat that meat or I will die trying, which is not a metaphor; that is a genuine risk I am currently running.

[System: You’re about two-thirds up the umbrella, mate. Pockets are at the top. Don’t rush it. You rush it, the umbrella tips, the guy feels it, and then you’re a smear on the concrete, and I’m filing a very short incident report.]

I’m not rushing. I’m vibrating. There’s a difference. Seventh inch. Eighth. The umbrella handle is right there, the curved bit, and I can see the back pocket from here, a rectangle of denim, the clear bag sitting inside it like a little gift someone left specifically for me. The plastic is catching the neon light. Pink and orange and red, the colours of cured meat and answered prayers.

[System: Don’t get emotional about prosciutto.]

​I’m not emotional. I’m focused.

[System: You’re absolutely emotional about the prosciutto.] ​Fuck you, you would be too. I reach the handle. The curve of it is actually perfect, wide enough that I can coil the last few centimetres of my tail around it for stability while my head extends out toward the pocket. I am a crystal twig snake doing a tightrope act on an umbrella handle at an illegal underground market to steal Italian cured meat from a stranger’s jeans. This is my life now. This is the Indulgence System working as intended, apparently.

My head clears the rim of the pocket. The bag is right there. Folded over at the top, not sealed, just tucked. The smell hits me like a wall. I have to actively suppress the urge to just bury my face in it and start eating because that would be noticeable, that would be a problem, the guy would definitely feel that. I hook my jaw under the fold of the bag and start pulling. Slow. Steady. The plastic makes a sound, a tiny crinkle, and I freeze again.

The guy laughs at something his friend says. Loud and perfectly timed, the crinkle disappears into it. I pull again. The bag moves upward, inch by inch, gravity and my own shaking doing their best to stop me. Then the corner catches on a thread and sticks, and my tongue is out before I’ve decided to do it, tasting the air on reflex: pork fat, denim, the specific flavour of everything going wrong at once.

[System: Easy, mate.]

​I know.

[System: Breathe.]

I don’t breathe, technically. I have lungs, but the process is more of a slow expansion than anything rhythmic. But I understand the sentiment, and I apply it. I work the corner free from the thread. The bag slides the rest of the way up and over the pocket lip, and then gravity does the work; it tips, and I catch it in my coils before it can fall, wrapping around the plastic with my body like I’m hugging it, which I am; I am absolutely hugging the prosciutto.

The guy doesn’t move. I need to descend, like some Mount Everest shit. I stop holding every muscle still. Wait.

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. The umbrella sways. I sway with it, pressed flat, playing dead, which is not hard because I am genuinely considering dying of anxiety right now. He doesn’t look down.

Okay. Okay. I’m doing this.

Going down is worse than going up because now I’m carrying something, the bag is maybe three times my body weight in real terms, which sounds insane, but I am only a 1-meter-long RGB strip of a snake, and prosciutto is dense, and every shift in balance makes the umbrella tremble. I compensate. I adjust. I move in tiny increments, tasting the air every few seconds to make sure no one is looking at the umbrella, no one is noticing the shimmer of a glass snake slowly abseiling down a reflective shaft with stolen Italian meat.

Fourth inch from the bottom fuck, I’m nearly there. The guy reaches back. Not for the pocket. For the umbrella ​Ahh, I’m going to have to fall. This is it damnit. I drop.

Not a controlled drop. A full panic drop, straight to the ground, landing on the concrete with a sound that is mostly absorbed by the market noise and partly absorbed by my own silent internal scream. The bag lands beside me. Intact. Sealed by some miracle of plastic engineering and the universe deciding I’ve suffered enough today.

I grab it in my coils and move fast and low. I need to activate my [Legless But Fast (Rank E)] skill; it speeds me along the disgusting ground while I hold onto the snack bag for dear life. Was I going to get one piece of meat? yes. Did my brain fail, and I took the whole bag? yes. I’m speed sliding along the baseboard, back toward the pipe outlet, weaving between boots and crates and the legs of a stall table, not thinking, not planning, just moving on pure adrenaline and the smell of pork guiding me home like a beacon.

[System: Quest progress: one of three items. Not bad, mate. Genuinely, not bad.] ​

What do you mean by 1 out of 3? I stole the WHOLE BAG?

[System: doesn’t count.] ​

I hate you.

I make it back to the pipe. I drag the bag in after me. I coil around it in the dark and press my face against the plastic and just sit there for a moment, heart hammering, scales damp with condensation and stress.

Then I start working the fold open with my forked tongue.

[System: good tongue work mate, great practice, lets try that out next time!]