ersatzsun:
“Can you not speak?” Another snake reaches back to turn the water off, wrapping its coils around the valve. “It’s quite all right, if you can’t… You may use your phone to communicate if you wish.” After all, one didn’t need speech to dispatch sinners. The woman was awfully jumpy, her anxiety practically sloughing from her like old skin, the smell of sweat, muscles tripwire-tense.
The gate opens, helped by yet another serpent. There were a half-dozen of them, some watching, some lying in the cool grass at rest. They all emerge from beneath the skirt of the long sundress she has on, which in the cool of the evening she is wearing beneath a hooded sweater.
The snakes... come out of her. Chell takes a moment to gawk, openly, eyes growing wider the longer she looks. This is not right, this is not how people are, this is--
Chell heaves another sigh, brisk, in and out through clenched teeth. She can’t think like that. Not now. Her head shakes, slowly, her gaze jerks upward to look this woman in the eye. She does not seem to mean harm, at least. The patience she exhibits is even oddly relieving. Chell finds herself soothed, however slightly; she steps into the garden perhaps a measure less tenuous.
With another little shake of her head, her hands rise--and then fall, abruptly, idle. Whatever word had risen with them died on the tips of her fingers. Instead, Chell rakes trembling fingers through her hair, and signs instead a rushed “HELLO”. She is not sure how this encounter is meant to proceed.
