AN: A brief, little Silas chapter. Starts off way, way in the past six thousand years ago then comes up to present day. We're back to Klaus and Bonnie in the chapter after this.
Warning – it's a kinda 'eww/ gross/ eh? / wtf?' chapter. It'll be a little confusing, but don't worry about it too much. Basic character development that had to be done.
The First Birthing
Nine months came… and passed.
The child did not come.
Ten months passed...
The child did not come.
One year passed...
The child would not come.
They had cast her out into the night when her belly continued to swell and swell. The child was surely dead within her, this they all knew, but her belly continued to swell. So they cast her out into the darkness, without cloth, without bread and without hope. But she survived.
With nothing to call her own except the entity within her womb, she survived in the dark. The unfathomable anguish of the nights, the despair by day… Disease, cold, hunger, fever, thirst, infection, pain, torture… She survived. When her hair fell out... When her eyes turned yellow and when her teeth came lose in her gums... When her skin became indurated with pustules, warts and ulcerations… When the entirety of the world seemed miserable desolation, she remembered the child within her and she survived. She had her baby inside her. Inside her. Safe from all dangers. Safe from hunger. Safe from winter's biting cold. Safe from the master's whip... She was the Mother.
She survived in the wilderness, living like a beast, feeding on field mice and worms, on swamp water and bat faeces, the spleens of dead animals and fat lizards that were too old to leave their holes... Driven through the bleak and the dark she went on, a shadow with no conscious thought save that she was the Mother and that she must survive.
When three years had passed, the baby inside her had become too heavy to bear and her spine cracked under the weight of it all. But still she lived. Her body, paralyzed, useless, an eyesore, persisted.
She was the Mother.
Surely, she was no longer a living woman, but now a wraith. An omen, they called her. A warning of pestilence and plague to come. The old ones of the village spat curses at her, and the brave young ventured closer to torment her with pebbles and pails of cold water. Surely, no good will come from her presence. Surely, she had made herself a devil's whore. Surely, their village would be doomed unless they killed her to remove the taint.
They decided to hang her.
After they whipped the demons out, they would hang her.
They cut the tongue from her month first, lest she summon her demons forth... Then they began the whipping.
For nine days and ten nights, they whipped her. Until her back was raw and bloody... Until she drifted beyond thought, beyond pain, beyond space and out of time. They whipped her until they decided that they had better things to do with their days than spectate the suffering of a random, strange, addled, demon-possessed woman.
Until she became a bore, and for the sad man delegated the task of carrying out the whippings – a tedious, monotonous, pointlessly dull chore.
Ready at last to be done with the Mother on the tenth day, they hung her from a tree. A big sturdy plum tree... with ripe juicy purple plums dangling low. She hung by the neck until she was dead. Then the crows fancied they'd rather pick at her already rotting flesh than task themselves to look for something fresher. The Mother was now nothing more than a feast for the crows... And an impending feast for the worms who'd have their way with her when the crows were done.
So there she was, swinging in the gentle wind from an in season plum tree, being devoured by maggots, carrion birds and carrion beetles, minding her own affairs like any proper corpse... when, at long last, the sun went down into the west and the child was born.
He fell out of her dead womb to the hard gravel below. The crows squawked and flew away. The wind stilled. The dogs sniffed and howled, but kept their distance...
Survive, my little one…
The child's new, bright blue eyes gazed up at the dead, rotting Mother. He was willing her back to life... Apologizing for what he had done to her, for the years she had suffered, for the years she had been made to carry him... Thanking her for being his shield and sword, his guardian, his home, his mouth, his ears, his eyes...
He would miss her, he realized.
The days would be colder. Harder.
Already the sharp stones were cutting into his soft, new feet…
When he was finished with his wordless prayer of thanksgiving and repentance to the Mother, his mother, he gathered the cord that still tethered them together in his hand and he tugged.
He caught the placenta when it fell, warm and soft. There would be no Mother's Milk for him, but he would get enough from this last parting gift. He was no suckling babe, anyway. He had teeth. Little baby teeth, but he could bite and chew. And the placenta was soft anyways, aside from the membranes which were tough and fibrous...
Soundlessly, the child walked off into the night... And Darkness swallowed him.
The Forty-First Birthing
She did not see the snake as it came out of the river. There was no moon. No stars. And her pain was too much.
A pity, because such a snake had never been witnessed by human eyes before. It was a large reticulated python. White with black cross-working, 20 feet long...
She screamed into the darkness, cursing her faith, cursing her father, her mother, all her ancestors, herself. The pain was too much. It felt as though her back was breaking, as if her belly was stretching and bursting. There was something within her that could not get out. Something begging for release. A dam, waiting to explode.
"Damballah!" she screamed out into the night begging the skyfather to relieve her suffering. For him to take away her pain. To carry her off to the other side where she would no longer suffer.
No man had ever lain with her, and yet her belly had grown as if she was with child. The people had made signs of protection when she passed near. They wore blue feathers in their hair. They surrounded their homes with salt and fresh urine to burn the evil spirits away. And when her screaming had become too much, they told her father to kill her.
Her father would not kill her with his own hand, though.
So he brought her to the river for the crocodiles.
And the crocodiles came…
And the crocodiles went…
And night had fallen…
Darkness swallowed her.
There was no moon. No stars. And her pain was too much.
She did not see the snake as it came out of the river.
She did not see the man as he came out of the snake.
She saw nothing, knew nothing, felt nothing but her pain…
Until the man, the god, the skyfather, lit a fire.
Damballah…
Damballah had come. He sat cross-legged staring into the fire… as snakes crawled out of him. Small snakes. Out of his ears, his nostrils, his mouth… Small white snakes, small black snakes, his body hummed and hissed.
He was nothing like how she had imagined him. Not large. Not monstrous... He looked almost like a man. Except for his rabbit red eyes.
And his sharp pointed ears.
Damballah.
She had called and he had come. Damballah would end her suffering.
Heads are going to fucking roll, Silas resolved as we wiped snake goo from his eyes.
Someone had fucked up on an epic scale.
Africa?
Really?
Heads were going to roll.
He was going to get on a plane and he was going to Mystic Falls and then heads were going to fucking roll. Starting with that toxic mega-cunt Niklaus, and then-
"Damballah," a hoarse voice whispered.
"Eh?"
He turned away from the brightness of the fire. Eyes adjusting... Pupils dilating... Functional retina developing...
And what do we have here…
Africa. The only continent in the world where you could still get fed to the crocodiles.
On a bad day? Lions.
Fucking Africa…
He'd missed it, truth be told.
Her name was… Asha?
Odd name for a girl. But she was odd all over. Been a long time since he'd seen one of her kind. Pygmy tribe. Bayaka, to be precise…
Lol…
When last had he come across one of the Bayaka? Dark skin, flawless mahogany… Full, taut breasts... And electric blue eyes. So vibrant… So blue… When last had he seen eyes like that?
She had called him out of the wind. She had called his spirit out of the water. She had called his flesh out of the earth. Oh, the wonder that you are.
"Asha?"
She gargled something in her pygmy tongue.
"English, please."
"Please…" a tear trickled out from the corner of her eye as she turned her head slowly towards him.
"Please, what? What do you want?" A snake slithered out of his nostril, semi-stifling him for a moment. He could feel them coiling around tumultuously in his stomach. There was a big, thick one sleeping in his intestines. A couple swimming around in his bladder and one wedged in his fucking urethra... He could feel their eggs in the alveoli of his lungs. Eggs in his liver… eggs in his spleen… in his kidneys… "You called me. I came. What do you want?"
The snakes were all over her.
She wasn't afraid though. Not even the slightest trace of fear. Classic Bayaka. Her fingers curled weakly, and her hand crept between her legs. "It hurts."
Silas nodded.
Fuck yeah, it hurts. He could feel every ounce of her pain, and it was disorienting. "You want to be free of the pain?"
"Yes."
"You want to live?"
"Yes."
And sign on the dotted line, forget the fine print... Your soul is mine. He sent one of his snakes up her thighs and inside of her, ripping through the rigid flesh and opening the passageway.
And then the blood began to flow.
Thick, dark blood. Hot, warm blood, just gushing out of her…
Waste not… Want not…
He beckoned her lazily. "Come here," he ordered.
Slowly she stood, shaky and weak. He could smell her fear now. The air was rank with it.
The blood was what had done her in.
Not being abandoned. Not the crocodiles. Not the darkness. Not the magicman sitting by his magic fire that had come out of a snake and not the snakes that were now coming out of the magicman, but her own blood.
He smiled at that. He liked a little fear in his women.
A little fear could go a long, long way.
Menarche. Some scary shit anyway you look at it. The most traumatizing experience for any girl breaking into puberty… And if the ever-happy Americans hadn't found a way to make it less horrendous, some pygmy girl in the bowels of Africa without access to Seventh Heaven reruns didn't stand a chance. Worse yet, some pygmy girl with an imperforate hymen.
Not too many missionary obstetricians volunteering their services to jungle pygmies who may or may not practice cannibalism.
She would have scared the fuck out of her family. And the whole village, no doubt, in order for them to leave her to the mercy of the river. A girl, coming of age and not passing her monthly blood? Demon possession, duh. The blood accumulating within her, month after month, dilating her abdomen – demon baby, duh.
African Jungle-People Logic. Impeccably sound.
How old could she be, he wondered. Girls with her problem were usually 13, 14… but she was older than that. 17? Maybe…
The fire and shadows danced on her skin beautifully as she came to stand before him. Positively trembling.
Intoxicating, heady, perfect, wonderful fear… He could lose himself in it. In her wide eyes. In her tears…
"Closer," he summoned her.
Cute, how afraid she was. Of him. Of the blood. How ashamed she was of her own body, her nakedness…
When you smile at the ground, it ain't hard to tell, you don't know, oh, oh, you don't know you're beautiful…
She took a small step toward him.
"Why are you so afraid? You called me."
"Who are you?"
"Damballah." Well, he was. Wasn't he? Or he used to be. So many names, hard to keep track of them all. "I am Damballah. Why are you so afraid, child? You called to me. You spoke my name, and I heard you. Why do you fear?"
"The blood?" her hand came away from between her legs to show him her dark, wet fingers. "I am dying?"
He leant forward unconsciously, drawn in by the fragrance. His appetite was awakening… "Do you want to die?" he spoke, but he couldn't hear himself. All he could hear was her heart. All he could see was the blood running down her legs… All he wanted was her blood.
He reached out and took her hand. The way she trembled at his touch… made him shudder. Slowly he pulled her to him…
"I don't want to die."
"Good." He closed his mouth around two of her fingers, sucking them clean. "You taste…"
"You want my blood?"
He nodded, weak. Near paralyzed with need. "Mother…" He pulled her in closer to him.
You have my eyes…
Mother…
He gripped her by the knees and stared up at her… "Bonnie?" The shape of the face was so familiar.
"My name is Asha. I-"
"Feed me..." He pulled one of her legs out from under her and tossed it over his shoulder and sealed his mouth to her opening. Not mother's milk, but it'd do.
AN: The original birth of Silas and his forty-first reincarnation.