As Bagheera settles on the branch he tells you to get some sleep. “We’ve got a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.”
You don’t want to go, though. For whatever reason. We went over that in the intro. You tell him as much with, “I want to stay in the jungle.”
Bagheera looks at you and laughs. “You wouldn’t last one day.” With that he yawns and stretches onto the branch.
Hmph. Bagheera thinks he’s so high and mighty and strong and whatnot. “I’m not afraid of anything in this jungle. I could look out for myself.” Yeah, you think, after all, if anything gets too bad or boring you can just go visit a different branching timeline!
Wait, no, you don’t think that. That’s just me putting thoughts into your head. Like this one: I want pie. That sounds delicious right WHOA HOLD ON, WHAT’S THAT?
Okay, so actually, because you’re glaring away and fiddling with some twigs off the tree (the tree doesn’t appreciate that by the way), you haven’t yet noticed there’s someone else up in this tree. All you notice is a sweet scent that you assume are some flowers somewhere, and a scraping sound you assume is some small harmless animal. But watching you is what at first appears to be human, sticking her head out from the leaves above. But as she creeps out further a difference is revealed, as below her waist is a thick snake tail, no doubt gripping a branch above to suspend her in the air.
She moves towards you for a better look, eyeing you with—what? Curiosity? Hunger? Lust? Some combination of those? She turns to look at Bagheera for a moment and, satisfied that he’s asleep, moves back to greet you.
“Say, now . . .” she says as if eyeing a curiosity, and that’s when you actually notice her. You turn and nearly jump back in surprise, but you keep your composure. A lamia? You’d never seen one—only heard stories. From all you had been told the lamia is prettier than you expected—but maybe you should have expected that. Her smooth skin glows and hair flows down to her tail, and she watches you with bright eyes.
“What have we here?” she asks. You turn away, not in the mood to deal with anybody. The lamia just laughs and moves closer to look at you, her hair falling over her face and bare shoulders. “Why, it’s a human.” You mutter and turn away again, but she keeps following you. She quietly and with clear interest says, “A rather attractive human.”
You glare at the lamia. Now, the thing is, you’ve been warned about lamias a lot over the years, but you’d never met one, so you don’t quite recall everything you were told. How much do you remember?
-5a Not a word of it.
-5b You just remember that you shouldn’t trust lamias.
-5c Wasn’t there also something about it being dangerous to look at them?
Duth Olec's Cuckoo Cosmos 