#i could feel the snake's scales and the skin pinching slightly around the holes

[i-am-just-a-skeleton]

y'all ever get just completely deranged thoughts like "there is a snake crawling in and out of the skin and flesh on your neck through holes that magically open and close as it passes" and you're like "what the FUCK are you talking about brain" but for at least a couple seconds you can feel it like it's really happening even though you know it's not

[arcanakiller]

The Illness

She had come, treading bare soles upon dry, cracked earth. The warmth of the searing day was still fresh on the crags, the pulsating heat that had since cooled under the waves of moonlight traveled from worked heel up to a somewhat slender ankle, lingering as a reminder of what had been and what would be on the morrow. The breeze that kicked so weakly, only willing to show itself in night’s sky, brushed dust and dead soil along her being. It itched and scratched in an uncomfortable manner, the woman closing her flowing cloak around herself to shield dusky flesh from further irritation.

 The wastes of southern Thanalan was a land without breadbaskets. The natives were as coarse, as dry and as scabrous as the earth they walked. The land teemed with the aether of flame, the most tempestuous of forces. An uninviting air, it was, that spread from canyon to desert and an aspect that the cloaked woman had no control of. As such, apprehension was evident on her; she did not sway in her steps as she would, she was none too smooth nor calculative on the path. Crimson eyes, which nestled behind the darkened veil of her hood, peered left, right, and left again every fifty paces.

 She had been summoned by raven, as was customary, to this blistering region. A woman of the wastes called for the hawk to make well her afflicted daughter, the parchment delivered by the bird describing the most unnatural boils. The lady wrote of a fire in the girl’s head, drowning herself in sweat-soaked sheets, her inability to speak, to eat, to move. Detailed were growths that seeped and oozed sickly fluids, that writhed when prodded.

 In her left hand, the hooded witch carried a reed, the thing alien to this soil held closely against her bosom. It was an offering afforded to the raven, a symbol of safety that labeled her to her summoner. At the passing of many hours and blistering of feet, her soles were subjected to a sudden flush of cool, dead wood. The whining creaks of battered steps made her presence known to those within the decayed shack they lead to. The woman could hear shuffling behind the door as she stopped before it and caught in a flash the flickering of shadows from the peephole. She stood silently, the sounds of wind tickling the ends of her cloak all that lingered for a spell. She held the reed to her chest still while her free hand lowered her hood, at last. Beaded and braided locks of crimson spilled forth from their former prison, falling down upon her shoulders and the swell of her bosom. A gentle sigh escaped her lips as air, warm as it was, breathed upon the nape of her neck.

 The door swung open from the inside with a sudden jerk, and within the doorframe was a woman broken and dirtied; her brown hair tangled and sweat-matted, blotches of dirt and dust speckled her cheeks, and her clothing was worn and weathered as the shack she resided in. Blue eyes spotted the reed she had sent to the witch nearly a week ago, slowly sliding up her form to meet crimson. “Hylda the Hawk,” she uttered in a hushed tone, her gaze sharply shifting within her abode. Hylda poked her head within and past the doorframe, laying her eyes upon a lump in the bed, hidden under layers of covers and quilts.

 “Please…come in. Before y’er seen…” she stepped back, beckoning the witch with hurried motions. She took her time, however, and gently shut the ruined door behind her. Her gaze remained on the ill child, what she was able to make of her under the darkness of the space, dimly lit with homemade candles spread about. Hylda handed her reed to the mother while her attention was affixed and reached around herself, freeing her shoulder from the weight of her satchel. “N-nothing has changed since the letter,” mother murmured, setting the reed upon a table and briskly shuffling towards the hearth. She fussed with a kettle held above flame, stirring the bag within. Herbal tea filled Hylda’s flaring nostrils when the lid was lifted, an appreciative humming rushed from her throat when she sniffed hints of chamomile.

 “You know the offerings well, woman,” Hylda spoke finally, ripping her eyes from the child, “this is good. The price of my services are lessened for your benevolence.” The mother sighed quietly as she fetched for cups, an expression of ease flushing over her wariness. The witch slipped her cloak down from her arms, revealing a youthful and curvaceous form beneath. Her bosom and womanhood were covered in wrappings and tight cloths, tickled with straps and jeweled sinuous strings of membrane littered in beads and bone. From her neck to her feet, and all along her arms and legs, was an ocean of black ink. It swirled and swayed along every curve and bend, designs of abstraction and depictions of folk and animals coated her hide. Rings of stone and bone adorned her fingers, toes, and ears. Hylda neatly folded her cloak four times and draped it over a chair.

 The mother offered to the witch a cup of piping tea in tired hands, to which Hylda accepted. She brought the cup to her nostrils, enjoying another sharp whiff before indulging a sip. She slowly sauntered to the bed-ridden girl. Thin fingers wrapped along the edge of a quilt, peeling it back to inspect the ill. Just as described, from viewing her face and neck along, she was battered with bruisy boils, a dark purple hue beneath her flesh. The area around her eyes, forced shut by a caking of bodily refuse, were reddened and swollen. Hylda loomed over the child and reached out, her jeweled fingers slithering into a combing through the girl’s matted brown locks. The mother approached with an air of hesitation, though spoke nothing of the witch touching her child. Instead, she wringed her hands together and spoke softly, “There is no voice…but she mutters things. Absurdity, all her words. I have to quiet her by forcing her to drink water, and it seems to help. Though…an hour or so later, and she’s mumbling again. And the boils…gods, those things grow every day.”

 The older woman made closer towards the witch, her hand resting atop her child’s covered ankle. “Is she savable, witch? You wouldn’t have come if she weren’t,” she asked and then stated, her tone unashamedly desperate. Hylda straightened, bore her eyes into the woman at her side, and finished her tea. She stepped around the mother and to her satchel, setting the empty cup upon the wooden table. “The sweetling’s muttering. Is there a constant? Is there one thing in particular she babbles of?” Hylda asked plainly, looking sidelong and pausing. The older lady lost herself in thought for a time, kneeling and affording attention to the sickly.

 “Snakes,” she said finally, as if gasping for air, ready to be rid of the word. “She whispers of snakes, a serpent…ever coiling and twisting. Biting and eatin’ itself. Aye, she speaks o’em. They occupy my sleep too, now. Of what import is this?”

 With a knowing chortle, the witch unfastened the loops of her bag. She shuffled within the contents, clanking echoing from within. Slowly she removed from the confines a large jar, nestling it against her chest. She turned to face the mother, whose eyes widened at the lump of coils writhing within the jar. Hylda held close to her an albino serpent, white scales glistening.

 “Sit, and listen,” Hylda demanded firmly. The mother was quick to obey following the highlander’s tonal shift, moving to sit herself in a chair bedside. “You are pregnant; your bleeding is not late, misses.” The mother froze in her seat, looking down on herself, her shaky hand smoothing up her thigh and resting against her middle. Hylda uncorked the jar as she continued, the thin snake feeling fresh air and stirring more and more to life. “Your girl is succumbed to a serpent’s poison, though no snake bit her. Nay, her illness is a punishment meant for you.” The older woman was quick to stagger and part her lips to speak, though Hylda silenced her with a wave of her finger. Her hand dipped into the jar, fingertips brushing lovingly against the snow-white skin. The creature began to coil around her wrist and slowly up her arm.

 “She is at the apex of her life, and you ask me to wish it away. For reasons beyond you and I, the gods have willed that you are to have one child, and one child only. You have disobeyed their will.” With a decent grip on the snake, she carefully removes it fully from the jar, letting it curl and slither around until she can comfortably cradle its head between her index and thumb. The mother’s eyes shook and narrowed at such a revelation; she hadn’t even piped up to refute, believing such affirmations in this desperate moment. She hadn’t dared to stop Hylda as she made closer to her daughter with the creature.

 The witch, with a gentle touch, smoothed her coarse palm down the child’s sweaty arm, the appendage lifeless. She found her tiny hand, and bent it ever slightly to expose a wrist. With a firm pinch at the serpent’s neck, it bound tightly against Hylda’s arm, hissing and opening its maw to expose dagger-like fangs. The mother gasped hoarsely, and without a mere warning, Hylda pierced the fangs into the ill girl’s wrist. Sickened blood of black, crimson, and green oozed and even sprayed in a mist from the two holes. The dusky woman gripped at the cloth holding her bosom and tugged at it, pulling it free. Wrapping it along her free hand, she held tightly at the wrist and wiggled and coaxed the serpent back into the jar. Hylda quickly worked to wrap the layer of cloth around the wrist in a tight knot, holding at it and beckoning for the mother with a jerk of her head. “Come, hold this tight now,” she demanded softly, moving briskly when the older woman took her place.

 The witch returned to gather her things, leaving the mother tending to the wound. She wrapped her cloak around her now bare chest to cover, replacing the satchel over her shoulder.

 “What am I to do?” the mother begged, eyes glassy.

 “Hold the wound. Replace the cloth anew when it is stained completely,” Hylda responded, walking closer to the edge of the bed, her bare feet padding smoothly against the wood. The child, who hadn’t so much as budged at the snake’s piercing, began to faintly squirm and mutter in tired breaths.

“The bloodletting will commence until the miasma of woe is free from her. From there, you will lance every boil on her body. She will sleep for a week, and will not walk for another moon. And on the first new day, she will speak – herself anew. As for the price…” she nearly hummed, eyes focusing on her summoner.

 “Your –son-,” she spoke, and the older woman’s eyes flared. “I will come for him in ten years’ time, for a favor.” The mother was taken aback from her daughter at such a notion, surprised that the woman could know the gender so soon, let alone that she was pregnant altogether, though her attention returned and she doubled her efforts. “Aye…I understand…” she said in a near sob, “I understand. Now…leave, you. And take your reed…I shan’t wish to remember y’till your return is nigh.”

 With a short-lived chuckle, the witch turned smoothly on a calloused heel, retaking the reed gently into her possession. “Take solace,” she offered as she made for the exit, “that you’ve been spared from the gods. That your sin has been erased by me. Every limb you birth will be paid for. Keep your son healthy, and feed him heartily.”

 Hylda shut the door behind her and with a gentle huff of warm dusty air, returned to the path whence she arrived. The sun had just begun to threaten its arrival with peaking rays over the ridges, and the woman was all too eager to be rid of the lifeless dune.