Python Embrace

Prologue

They say that love conquers all things. Even fear. Even war. Even hate. I can remember a gap in my life where I did not believe that. I used the fear, war, and hate to push me on to what I thought I wanted or at the very least try to fill the emptiness that loss had left behind.

It did not work of course, and today I believe that I still suffer from my childhood actions.

I cannot change them.

I cannot escape them.

I can only hope that they do not take all I have left.

Charis Cobriana

Chapter 1

I walked hurriedly down the hall back to my son's room where he lay dieing in his bed.

This would be his final hour. The nurse had told me so, though I would not have believed her if I had not believed it myself.

Avain poison, falcon acquired no doubt, had run its course through my son's cobra body, stealing his life, his very essence, away. It'd turned his rich tan skin to a pasty pale, and his dark hair looked as black as ever as cold sweat made it cling to his forehead.

The nurses stood back as I approached and kneeled by the bed of my dieing son.

"Carson?" I called to him, rubbing the hair gently from his eyes. Those same eleven year-old eyes looked up at me, the vibrant red mostly gone, leaving an unexpected violet where the blue he'd inherited from me mixed with the remainder of the garnet.

"There, there, my son." It was all I could do to keep from crying. Though the show of emotions was highly accepted to the point of being polite in serpiente society, I did not want the extent of this darling boy's condition to be betrayed to him by his mother's tears. "I am here now, Carson."

"Mother," his breath was ragged and hardly audible.

"Yes."

"I'm so tired…"

"Sleep my dear son. Sleep." I kissed his cool forehead then, gently savoring the action; it would be the last time I would carry it out.

"Mother."

"Yes?"

"T…tell me a story…" I tried my best to fight back the tears.

"Which one?"

"Anything…" His voice faded as he closed his eyes, but he was still breathing.

"Okay, okay. I'm going to tell you a story of your mother, me, when I was a young girl…"

and so my story began…