Coughing again, I rolled onto my back and felt the warmth spread throughout my body.

The heat inside me hurt. Almost as much as all the broken pieces… but…

Staring up the cliff that I had just been shoved over, I groaned as I realized what she had done.

She had healed me. From injuries I was about to endure.

Injuries I was healing from now. Thanks to her pushing me off the cliff.

Jeez…

She had told me to trust her… but…

If this was trusting someone, maybe I didn’t want to…

If this was what friends did do each other…

Then…

“Well… well… well…”

I slowly blinked as I rolled over a little more, and took in the sight of the white snake.

“Hey again…” I whispered with what little strength I could muster.

“How… fascinating…” she said as she stared down at me with her two red eyes.

Focusing on the left eye, I wasn’t too surprised to see it looked fine. Whatever damage had been done to it back then by my family was… obviously gone.

Coughing up some warm blood, I flinched as the heat consolidated inside. It left my arms and legs and tail, and went to my chest… making it burn so hot I almost wished I could crawl over to the loud lake nearby and dunk myself into it.

“The pain… will… fade,” the snake said.

She was right of course. It was already becoming clear that I was healing up. My hands and arms were starting to move around, writhing in pain. My legs curled up under me, when they hadn’t been moving at all earlier.

“Still hurts,” I said.

The familiar clicking sound filled the area.

Funny. I’d heard that in some of my dreams recently.

Smiling at such a thought, I peered out of pained eyes and looked at her.

“You know… you’re actually rather pretty,” I told her. And definitely bigger. Her eyeballs had only been about the size of my head last time, yet now they looked almost twice the size. If she hadn’t recognized me, I’d have wondered if she was even the same snake or not.

The huge snake slowly tilted its head, as if amused. “A concept… beyond me,” she said.

“Grandmother taught me that word,” I said, noting the term concept.

“Family… also… something beyond… me,” she added.

I gulped some blood, and was glad to feel no more enter my mouth as I coughed and rolled over onto my side.

I was healing well. At least… for now.

“So does that mean you don’t have a name, either?” I asked her.

“Slave.”

Getting to my knees, I frowned as I looked up at her.

“Slave…?” I asked. Really?

She only nodded her huge head.

Feeling a little sorry for her… I also kept back the horrid idea that she was being literal and figurative.

What if she was a slave to things greater than her? Just as we used to be slaves to those like her?

If that was the case…

Just how small was I? How insignificant?

And to think I had felt tiny when Witch had told me stories of the humans and their cities.

“You… are a… poor hunter…” Slave said as she lowered her head a little.

“That’s what my family used to say too,” I said with a nod.

“Why… try…?” she asked.

I blinked, and realized something serious.

She didn’t realize I was here with someone else.

Surely she could smell Witch on me…? She wasn’t far from me… she had huge holes for a nose and…

Gulping, I decided to simply play along. Maybe that was Witch’s whole plan. “Didn’t know what else to do, I guess,” I whispered the truth.

“Hm…” Slave leaned back a bit, but didn’t seem too bothered by my answer.

“Did you eat him? My elder?” I asked before she could say anything more.

“The large one? Yes. Though… not without… price,” Slave said, and then she shifted. Her huge body slithered around, and half a moment later a piece of her tail was shown to me.

Not far from the tip… was now a weird chunk of dark skin. A massive piece had been taken from her tail, as if bitten off. It was healed already, but…

“Uh… at least it was just the tail?” I offered a way to see it.

Slave laughed with her clicking sound, and her tail lowered back to the ground behind her. “The wound… it festers… it aches,” she said.

Oh…

“We… aren’t toxic or poisonous I think,” I said to her.

“He… wasn’t… no,” She nodded.

Hm… so maybe it was just… a typical scar. Something that ached without reason.

“Though… it was worth it, right? You wanted more power… did you get it?” I asked.

The huge snake reeled back a little, and blinked at me. For a small moment… I began to doubt it’d continue indulging me, but then it clicked a few times in laughter and opened its mighty mouth.

“We shall… see,” Slave then said, and did so with a higher tone than usual.

Was that… happiness…? Maybe it was. And if it were, then that meant she was smiling right now… even if her opened mouth looked terrifying.

With the open mouth, I noted her fangs. The huge ones that were curled a little inward, which moved with her jaw.

They were all there.

“Your tooth grew back,” I said.

Slave tilted her head, and then opened her jaw even wider. For a small moment all of her teeth and fangs moved outward, as if to show them off… then they returned to curled up inside her mouth.

“Yes. Lose them… often,” she said.

Huh… I wasn’t sure if I could grow teeth back or not. I didn’t think I could.

Coughing one last time, I shifted and glanced around. This area of the forest, down here under the cliff and near the waterfall… was very lush. The grass was thick. The forest dense.

Yet I had still landed on the sharp rocks…

Though…

Reaching up, I rubbed the back of my head… and felt the familiar feel of soaked hair. Soaked from not water, but blood.

Yet as I touched my head, where I should be feeling wounds… and warm blood, I instead only felt clumped up cold blood. Already drying.

“Heal. Quickly. We… do…” Slave said as she watched me.

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“Right…” I nodded, but knew better than to think the reason I was fine and had healed so quickly was for any reason other than Witch’s ability.

I couldn’t feel her warmth inside me anymore, though… so hopefully I didn’t get hurt again anytime soon…

If able…

I glanced up at Slave, and wondered if I was supposed to… fight her, or just stall her.

It had to have been why Witch had thrown me down here, but… well…

Even with her in front of me, and even if I knew Witch might be able to save me from even fatal wounds… I still wasn’t sure how to actually fight this giant creature. Especially now that it looked even bigger than it had before.

Slave then blinked and lowered her head… she squinted at me, and I noticed her face shift a little.

If before she had been smiling… this was definitely instead a frown.

“I noticed… before… you… are…” Slave spoke slower than ever, and I felt the hairs on my tail stand up in apprehension.

Was this it? Was it now going to eat me? Or was it going to say something profound?

She then blinked, lifted her head… and turned.

I followed her gaze… and frowned at the sight.

Witch was there. Standing right next to her.

With both hands on Slave’s body.

“What…?” Slave spoke quicker than ever as she pulled away quickly.

She slithered away from Witch with such force, I half expected to see Witch get hit by a tail. I was about to turn my head, to follow her body as it was thrown far away, maybe even into the lake nearby.

Instead the snake only coiled up and away from her, as if afraid.

“No…!” Slave shouted.

Witch smiled as she held out her hands, palm open… and then lowered them and nodded. “Yes,” she said back at her.

Wait… it was done…?

That was it? Already?

Turning to Slave, I watched as the whole snake froze for a tiny moment… and then she turned and looked at me.

“You… tricked…” she started to say with a lower than usual voice… and then she jolted.

I staggered backward on unsteady feet as Slave began to thrash violently. Her whole body began to coil and slither around each other with great force. The sound of scales scraping scales was as loud as the nearby waterfall, as if she was doing it in an effort to scrape off whole sections of her scales.

Witch didn’t move from where she stood as we watched Slave thrash and hiss. A low, guttural moan sounded throughout the forest as she cried out in pain.

Although a snake… it was quite obvious that she was doing the same thing my brother had done. My older brother whom Witch had hurt.

The giant bundle of snake rolled near a tree, and then promptly ran into it. Parts of the tail coiled around the tree, and it snapped with a resounding pop as it was broken and pushed over. The whole tree fell on a part of Slave, and then she began to coil and thrash all over it. Within moments the whole tree, branches and treetop included, disappeared in a mess of white snake.

Stunned, I watched as the snake continued to coil around the tree… gripping it tighter and tighter… snapping more and more pieces of wood and bark as it did so. Eventually the hissing and groaning diminished, and all I heard was the sound of wood breaking, and scales and flesh squeezing each other.

Then… without much more… the snake began to go quiet and stop moving.

I gulped as I glanced at Witch, who had a huge smirk on her face.

Was it… dying already? Older brother had been writhing around for a lot longer than this…

Though she had also mentioned at that time she hadn’t tried to kill him. She had been gentle with him.

Odds are she hadn’t been gentle at all with her enemy.

Parts of the snake began to go limp. Parts of the tail started to uncoil from the tree and itself, and then her head emerged from the giant mess. It slid outward, along the ground, at an odd angle. And as it did so… its mouth opened wide, expelling a strange sounded hiss as it did.

Then, as that final hiss echoed throughout the forest… she went still.

And stayed still.

“Slave…?” I asked softly.

It didn’t move. Its eye, the only one I could see from this angle, didn’t even twitch.

Was it… playing dead…? Or was it genuinely done and over?

Glancing over to the white-eyed woman, I felt a little uneasy at the sight of her massive grin.

She was very pleased with herself.

“She’s not dead yet, Rennalee… but she’s moments from being so,” Witch said, noticing my look.

Oh…? I wonder how she could tell such things.

Looking back to the snake, I went still as I noticed her eye had moved.

It was now looking straight at me. Which was disturbing, since her head was at an angle where I knew such a look was likely discomforting, if even impossible. Her whole eye had basically twisted around completely, for her pupil to face me as clearly as it was.

“Renn…alee…” Slave whispered.

For some reason I found myself walking forward.

As I approached, I noted that Witch didn’t stop me. She said nothing as I walked up to the massive head… which really was bigger than I could comprehend. Even on the ground, all twisted, I still had to look all the way up to meet its eye.

The red eye stuck to me. Holding my gaze.

“Slave… I’m sorry…” I said to her.

I hadn’t wanted to trick her in such a way. Though I wasn’t sure if I had actually done it or not. Not only had Slave not noticed Witch approach, neither had I.

“It’s… fine… Since…” each word she spoke was softer than the last. And while near her head, up close, and with her mouth open… I realized something very interesting.

She wasn’t speaking with her mouth. There was no air coming from it. Her voice wasn’t coming from the mouth at all.

Which somehow made sense, since now that I thought about it… her mouth hadn’t moved as she had spoken. It had only opened and closed when making that clicking noise…

“Since…” she said again, and I frowned at her.

“Slave…?” I asked softly.

Her eye then shifted. The pupil widened… and went dull.

“Like… me…” Slave said with a wheeze.

Like… her? A slave? I’d never met the gods that supposedly created me.

Or was it another meaning…? Maybe…

“She’s dead,” Witch said as she stepped up next to me.

I glanced down at her hands as she did, and suddenly had a new respect for them.

“That… honestly didn’t go as I had expected it to,” I told her.

“Hm… honestly I expected her to fight until the end. But she was more animal than not. And once they reach their end, some animals just…” Witch shrugged as she stopped talking.

Just… what? Give up?

Was that what that was?

It had almost felt like she hadn’t wanted to thrash around too much. As if for a greater reason.

She had wrapped around that tree… not to squeeze and destroy something, but instead for the opposite.

She had done it to keep herself in one spot.

Or had I just… misunderstood…?

Feeling strangely wrong all of a sudden, I did my best to ignore my friend’s smile. She was happy. Proud.

I felt anything but.

“Thank you, Rennalee! Hopefully you understand I did what I did for a reason…? You’re okay right? Are you hurt anywhere…?” she asked as she studied me.

“No… I feel fine,” I said, and hoped I would be for a long time. I suddenly didn’t want to rely on her help for injuries anymore.

Witch smirked at me and drew closer, and wrapped an arm around me. She clung to my shoulder, and gestured to the giant snake in front of us.

“Look! A mighty one, laid low!” she declared.

Laid low indeed…

Why’d I feel so… gross?

Doing my best to comprehend what I was feeling, I also did my best to… push the thoughts and worries away. For now.

I didn’t want Witch to realize what I was thinking, after all.

“Next time warn me, okay?” I asked her.

“Huh? There won’t be a next time, Rennalee. It’s over. My hunting days are now done,” she said, happy.

Oh…?

Although still disgusted, I found myself liking the sound of that. If that was the case maybe I didn’t need to worry much from now on.

“Now… before we leave, we must burn it…” Witch took a deep breath and sighed as she shook her head. “Going to be a pain… but at least it already gathered the wood for us, huh?” Witch said with a squeeze of my shoulder.

She laughed at her own joke, and I nodded while I looked at the snake once more.

Looking up, to the red eye… I found it was already darker. The bright red was now a dull one… akin to the color of some stones found in the rivers around here.

It now looked ugly.

“Let’s get it over with, before other creatures smell it. These things draw the whole world to them once they die,” Witch said as she released me, and stepped forward. Likely to begin burning it immediately.

Gulping… I watched my strange friend go to her task. Already done basking in her own success, and ready to move on to the next task of her life.

Glancing around… I noted the forest around us. The cliff behind. The waterfall nearby, roaring without stop.

Shouldn’t I feel… happy too?

The thing that had slain my family was now dead. Defeated.

Yet…

Looking back to the snake, the one who had called herself Slave, I narrowed my eyes at her.

I had much to learn. Not just about the world… but myself.

Because right now I felt sick. I felt wrong. As if nothing had gone the way it should have… and everything that had happened had made no sense and had no reason.

My family had been hunted by it. Yet I wasn’t sure why. It had spoken to me oddly, and not others… yet I hadn’t figured out the reason it had held its wrath back.

She had spoken to me. Yet not my mother or sister that she had swallowed without hesitation.

Why? It made no sense.

It was confusing. So very much so.

My family was now gone. Yet… somehow I felt more lost now than I had after their deaths.

And…

“Shoot… Rennalee, mind finding some kindling? All this junk is damp,” Witch asked as she lifted a branch.

“Sure…” I nodded and stepped forward… and decided to stick around with her for as long as I could, and needed to.

I needed to find out why she had been hunting the snake. To find out why she had her strange abilities… and why I was now involved with it all so haphazardly.

I might not ever really understand it all… but…

“She’ll burn well! Just you wait!” Witch shouted as I headed for a nearby tree. I could tell she wasn’t really shouting at me… but the world. Or whoever she was thinking of at the moment.

Yes… I needed to at least try. I needed to at least see if I could figure it out. This world. These creatures. Her. Myself.

So that when something like this happened again someday… I’ll at least not feel so confused and sad once it was all over.

Because this felt worse than even the beatings from my family had.

And that wasn’t good at all.