Wander about looking dismayed

[aestrix]

There is a certain reason why wandering around outside by yourself while looking dismayed and thinking about your troubles might get you a bit more than sore feet, burrs in your shoes, and catharsis.

Sometimes, you might just find a mysterious old woman. It's hard to tell them apart from perfectly ordinary old women, just the way mist curls around her feet or for the way her eyes catch the light a bit too well, or other telling signs of mysteriousness. Those vary, though, and often it's quite a good idea to err on the side of caution with these things, and take care with heeding their advice.

While their advice often is a very bizarre set of instructions, following them perfectly will get you exactly the result the mysterious old woman advertised, without fail. If she advertises a fixed roof if you were to weave a net made of reeds picked only at midnight on a new moon and then drape it over your roof at sunrise, or a full stomach if you filled a large pot with clear water, acorns, and fresh wildflowers and put it over a fire and leave it to simmer for four hours, you will get a fixed roof or a pot filled with delicious stew. If you follow the instructions exactly.

If you don't, you could get something else entirely.

Comments

[light_another_life]

"Lindworm, shed your skin first."

This seems kind of formulaic, she might as well roll with it.

[pythbox]

It claws off another layer, revealing a set of deep black scales beneath.

And the cycle repeats, each skin more beautiful than the last, until he coils on the floor in blood-streaked rainbow scales and hisses: "Wife, will you shed your shift for me...?"

[light_another_life]

"Husband," she murmurs, edging closer to the birch branches and looking guilty and sad, "shed your skin first."

[pythbox]

Beneath these scales there is nothing but flesh and blood.

The lindworm has no more demands.

[light_another_life]

"I am very, very sorry about this," winces Imarivet.

And - well. Birch rods. Time to use them for what they were brought for. Augh.

[pythbox]

The great serpent thrashes, but whether because of magic or an incredibly considerate nature, he doesn't strike her with his arms or head or tail.

[light_another_life]

That's good, this would be a bit harder to do if he returned the favor.

She runs out of birch rods before her arms give out, despite the number of birch rods, and she takes a shuddering breath that sounds like the opener to a sob but can't quite get there. She doesn't let herself cry, she has work to do, she is not done.

Her husband is dragged into the tub containing the lye, and she doesn't have the heart to attempt to scrub but does recall that more of him must be washed than left dry, so despite the sting she makes sure as much of him as she can get (which is nearly all) is washed in lye. Then she hauls him into the milk, makes sure all of him's covered in that, too, and then hauls him back out and onto the neat pile of abandoned shifts she left for exactly this purpose. Shifts get bundled, she counts to make sure all of them are bundled around him, and then really can't bring herself to haul the poor thing any further and just wraps the descaled lindworm in her arms and lets herself cry.

"Sorry. I'm sorry," she whispers, voice breaking a little.

[pythbox]

The lindworm flops around a bit during this process, but presents no serious resistance.

It has nothing further to say, when all is done; and somehow, it seems to manage to fall asleep.

[light_another_life]

She needs to do a bit of crying first, but - yeah. This was pretty damn exhausting.

When to stop holding the lindworm wasn't one of the questions she asked, so she doesn't try to un-hug before she gives in to exhaustion and falls asleep. She has had a long day.

[feel_so_free]

In the morning, she is no longer hugging a serpent.

[light_another_life]

... Also no longer hugging a husband.

She briefly wonders about whether or not that invalidates their marriage, and then decides that actually, right now she doesn't care.

Un-hugging doesn't seem like a thing she wants to do just yet, though she does shift a bit to try and relieve her aching limbs - ow, no, that just made it worse. She hisses in pain, but decides that doing things is too hard and she should instead not. So she doesn't.

[feel_so_free]

Her non-serpent non-husband wakes up and starts making distressed noises.

[light_another_life]

Eep!

Time to un-hug.

... Is there an obvious way to sooth distressed noises, can she help...?

[feel_so_free]

Distressed noises continue. The ex-lindworm is sadly not wearing any helpful 'soothe my distress, here's how' signs.

[light_another_life]

"... Hi...?" she attempts. Does the ex-lindworm have language, it seems like she would, she was speaking while she was a lindworm, but now she is no longer a lindworm so that might not apply.

[feel_so_free]

It's possible that she does have language, but if so, she is too distressed to make use of it. Instead she curls up amid skins and shifts and cries a lot.

[light_another_life]

Imarivet considers doing something that attempts to soothe, then decides that if she had just been a reptile that was forced to eat people for however long, she wouldn't want to be touched by a stranger that just made her rip ten layers of skin off and then whipped her with birch rods and dumped her in lye. Instead, she retrieves one of the sheets from the bed and gently drapes it over the ex-lindworm. Does she seem okay with this?

[feel_so_free]

She snuggles into the sheet and continues crying.

[light_another_life]

... Okay. She - doesn't know how to help with that. Hugs seem an option, but she's thirsty and kind of shakey and covered in bits of lye blood and milk and sort of sticky with half-dried sweat and her family is likely now wondering whether or not she's dead -

"I'll be back in a little bit, okay?" she murmurs, in a soft voice. In case the ex-lindworm can understand her.

[feel_so_free]

Sniffle.

[light_another_life]

She smiles a little at the ex-lindworm, then goes to the door and pokes her head outside. Is anyone there?

[mydarkness]

Taphinieu is sitting against the wall opposite the door, looking tired and nervous and like he may have been sitting there all night. He spots her and smiles. "Oh, good, you're alive."

[light_another_life]

"I am!" she says, smiling properly. "She's, um, also alive."

[mydarkness]

"...Um, 'she'?"

[light_another_life]

"Yep. She. Also the room is an absolute disaster now."