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The Mother sees us.
We tastes her in the stone.
We sense her heats in our pits.
The great black cold was above when we slid through the grass. The light was bright from a big moon, like a wakeful eye.
Our pits sense mouses. Pixies.
We licks the airs: fear.
We slips through the mud, following a pat pat pat of the mouses heart.
Big moon makes the grasses sliver. The mouses sniffs, watchful.
We lash, quick as tongues. Fangs wet.
Our jaw opens wide as the moon and we takes the mouses inside, its warms thick in our belly.
Sleeps.
The white eye closes and the yellow opens with the great warm blue. The sun warms our skin and our meal is a knot along our body.
A snotful human’s steps shake the ground.
It is rare that they disturbs us, we keep our coils still on the warm muds.
Boom, boom, boom its feetses shake the crackled ground.
“Are you hurt?,” the human says in the Mother’s tongue.
We raises our head and open our pits.
“It ssssspeaks,” we reply, sussing its heat. Not like other humanses.
We taste its blood.
The Mother is under the human’s skin, but we do not know how.
“Do you need help?” the human asks us again.
We must ask the Mother why a human has her blood.
We decides to tricks it.
“The human blockssss the ssssun,” we says.
“Sorry, I’ll leave you to it,” the human says.
We thinks the human uses the Mother’s tongue not very soft. But how does it speaks to us?
We wonders.
The human watches us for a short time, then offers to takes us to a warm rock up the hill.
We thinks. What if the Mother knows the human? We will see what it knows.
It reaches and we slithers up its arm and find such warms.
Oh, the warms.
We will tell the Mother what it knows.
It takes us far from home, but we have such warms.
We do not taste the Mother here, we do not feel her shake the stones, but the human keeps us in its sleevses. It feeds us mouses and we are content.
Soon we come back to our home.
We senses our kind in the walls, in the pipes. We senses the Mother.
She croaks to us from the deep and we slides off the human’s bed.
We slides deep, deep, deep where stones become wet. We flicks our tongue, sussing the way since it has been a long time.
No eye shines down here. The stone mouth drips with wets, and the rock shakes.
We trembles, coiling small, small, small.
The Mother rumbles up onto the rock, her slick scales glint in the dark.
We shuts our eyeses and pray to her.
She is kindest.
Wisest.
Sharp fang.
Our skin sings our prayerses.
The Mother huffs with big steam, sussing us.
“IT ISSSS BACK WITH THE MASTER’SSSS HEIR,” she says.
We trembles. We does not know what she means.
“We keepssss watch on a human that sssspeaks the Mother’ssss tongue,” we says. We never lies. “Why doessss it do thissss?”
A great puff climbs the chamber from the Mother’s noses.
“THE MASTER KEEPSSSS THE MOTHER,” she says. “WE DOES ITSSSS BIDDING. MASTER LOVES US, FEEDS US.”
“How doessss the Mother know it issss the Master’ssss heir?” we says.
“ONCE, A MASTER MADE ITSSSSELF INTO USSSS, THE FATHER. IT’S BLOOD ISSSS OUR BLOOD.”
We feels this in our cold hearts, our clutchhole clenches.
The Mother blesses us and we slides to the surface, shakeful and ready.