Limitless Evolution As a Snake

A bright flare of heat appears at the end of the alley, a human-shaped silhouette against the cooling grey bulk of the dead elephants. She’s all sharp, warm curves that don’t belong in this grimy hellhole, a waist so narrow I could wrap a coil around it twice. Even from here, I can see the heat bloom from her chest.

My human brain supplies the details: a Barbie doll lost on her way to a country club, dressed in a pleated pink skirt and a white crop top that’s impossibly clean. She looks like she should be holding a smoothie, not standing near cooling corpses.

My tongue flicks out on pure reflex, tasting the air before my brain even catches up. The tip of my tail gives a single, sharp twitch against the pavement. Venom beads at the tips of my fangs.

[System: Damn, mate. Mate, she’s a solid ten. I want ten of her.]

Shut up. I saw her first.

She spots me. Her whole body flinches, wings twitching like she’s about to launch straight up into the sky, and then she’s moving, sprinting across the alley on legs that look way too delicate for this kind of terrain. She nearly eats concrete on a crack in the pavement, arms pinwheeling, wings flaring out for balance, and somehow recovers without losing an ounce of grace.

”Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, are you okay?”

Her voice comes out breathless and high, panic bleeding through every word. She drops to her knees right in front of my face, way too close, way too fast, and I catch a whiff of her perfume cutting clean through the stink of alley garbage and elephant sweat.

I don’t answer. Mostly because I’m still recovering feeling in my own jaw, and partly because some deep animal instinct is screaming at me not to trust anything this pretty standing this close to three dead elephants.

She doesn’t wait for an answer anyway. Her hand dips into some little pink bag strapped across her body, and she pulls out a device that looks way too familiar, some kind of scanner thing, all sleek white plastic and a soft blue light on the end.

Lyra used one just like it on me back in twaiwi when I was just a little glass noodle, right after I got my ass kicked the first time.

”I’m fine,” I try to say, except it comes out more like a wheeze because my jaw still isn’t back to being a jaw yet.

”No, no no no, it’s okay, just hold still, okay, this’ll only take a second,” she says, and she’s already running the thing over me before I can argue any further.

The blue light washes over my scales and it feels warm, like sitting under a heat lamp except the heat is coming from inside my body instead of outside it.

I feel micro-fractures in my scales sealing over, the bone plates beneath them fusing with a dull heat. The dozens of fine bones along my body shift back into alignment, the deep ache receding as my jaw settles with a faint pulse.

[System: Oh, she’s got the good stuff. Way better than Lyra’s model. That’s rich girl tech, mate. Look at that resolution on the readout.]

I try to twist my head to actually look at the readout floating above the scanner, but she tilts it away, still muttering little reassurances under her breath the whole time, like she’s talking to a scared puppy instead of a snake the size of three of her.

Her eyes keep flicking over me between passes of the machine. Not just checking the wounds. Studying me, the way you’d look at something you weren’t sure was safe to touch but couldn’t stop looking at anyway.

Which, fair, because I’m doing the exact same thing to her.

My tongue flicks out again, tasting her scent up close now. Perfume, sure, but underneath that, something warm and clean, no trace of blood or violence on her at all. Doesn’t match anything about this situation, or why she’s down here.

”You’re healing really fast,” she says, more to herself than to me, her gaze fixed on the readout. ”Like, faster than the device should even allow for something your-” she stops herself, cheeks going pink, ”your size.”

[System: mate, she almost called you small. She thinks ur small.]

I am not small; I’m above average, shut up.

”Who are you,” I try again, and this time my jaw works well enough that the sounds form into words, a low rasp overlaid with a faint hiss.

Her whole body goes still for a second. Wings twitch again, that nervous flutter I’m starting to recognise as her tell. She glances back over her shoulder at the mouth of the alley, at whatever she was looking at before she noticed me, and when she looks back, her doe eyes have gone wide and a little scared.

”There’s no time,” she whispers. ”We really, really need to go, like, right now.”

The more panicked she gets, the calmer I am. Some kind of evolutionary trait, maybe or just the byproduct of being raised by a man who considered all emotional display a sign of weakness, in which case, cheers, Dad, your legacy lives on.

I’m not built for being herded. I hold my ground, letting a thick coil of my mid-body unfurl with a heavy slide across the concrete. I rear my head up another few inches, bringing my face level with hers, my forked tongue tasting the bleach and sugar of her panic.

”Who’s chasing you?” I ask, the words a low rumble. If it’s big enough to scare her, I want a name before it eats us both.

She fumbles the scanner, nearly drops it, then grabs my face with both hands. Her grip is shaky but desperate, fingers digging into the tough scale just behind my jawline.

”You don’t understand. You’re not safe here. You have to come with me—”

”I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”

I snap it harder than I mean to, but her whole story is giving off cult recruitment energy, and the last time I followed a pretty face into a dark hallway I woke up in a glass tank.