The forest deepened, its canopy thick with vines that dripped like wet ropes. The air grew warmer, heavy with the musk of damp soil and the faint sweetness of rotting fruit. Strange birds wheeled overhead, their cries sharp as knives. She stumbled often, but each time she slowed, Yves' tail brushed against her calf, urging her forward.
The trees parted at last, revealing a hollow carved into the land. Firepits smoldered in the basin, their smoke rising in thin, twisting columns. Figures moved there—scaled bodies glistening in the glow, their movements both human and not. Some lay coiled together in great knots, heat shared skin to skin. Others dragged the husks of shed skins to hang upon branches, pale and translucent, fluttering like abandoned veils.
Rami froze at the sight.
The air was thick with the scent of ash and musk. Children wrestled in the dust, their tails tangling until one yielded with a hiss. A woman bent low, swallowing a strip of meat whole, her throat bulging grotesquely before smoothing again. Around the fires, elders sat in silence, tongues flicking to taste the air, their eyes reflecting the flames like molten coins.
Yves slid ahead of her, his body weaving through the gathering. The others turned to watch, their gazes sharp, unblinking. She felt their attention press against her skin, tasting her fear as surely as if it were a scent.
At the center of the basin lay a stone slab, blackened by fire, feathers and ash scattered across its surface. Yves coiled near it, his body folding into a spiral. Then, before her eyes, his form began to shift.
The coils tightened, shuddered, and broke apart. Scales melted into skin, the long body shortening, limbs unfurling from the mass. When he rose, it was on two legs, his chest broad, his skin dark and faintly gleaming as though it still remembered the scales. His hair fell damp against his shoulders, and his eyes—still golden, still unblinking—fixed on her.
He opened his mouth, and the sound that came was thick, drawn out, the forked tongue shaping words with a strange, slurred weight.
"You… eat."
The syllables dragged, heavy with the hiss of his tongue, but the meaning was clear.
Rami's breath caught. She had seen him hunt, seen him swallow what she could not, seen him break bone with a flick of his tail. But this—this was more dangerous. A man who was not a man, speaking with a mouth that still remembered the serpent.
She lowered her gaze, her voice trembling. "I… ate."
His lips curved, not quite a smile, more the shadow of one. He stepped closer, the heat of his body carrying the musk of scale and ash. His tongue flicked once, tasting the air between them, and his voice came again, slow and sinuous.
"Not… enough."