The Female Serpent

From birth Viper had been quite beautiful. She screamed mightily from her tiny lungs, announcing loudly her advent into an unknown and cold world. Who had dared to drag her from the warmth and comfort of her warm womb, she challenged anyone to slap her innocent behind as a welcome into a stark and sterile room.

As Viper grew, she drew the envy of her female peers and the leers of the opposing others. Her mother taught her to swish her lovely tail in concealed disdain and to learn to read the secret and real intentions behind the coy and covert wiles of humanity.

Her father watched closely as she had her growing playdates. But as she approached womanhood, flames from his eyes began scorching the souls of young boys as they came to solicit real dates, their hormones raging in their young eagerness.

Yet, to all of this Viper was completely oblivious. She tolerated her parents, they hovered, but they did love her in their own way. She hated playdates, she hated boys, she hated people. True to her nature, and to her great secret pleasure, she basked in her aptly named snake-like nature.

Somewhere deep inside of her a beast kept trying to emerge. She felt the pull of her Native American ancestry. Viper's mother was descended from the Apache nations of the Southwest American people. A fierce, independent and aggressive people who fought for their right to live as they pleased.

In her dreams Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, long past warrior leaders of their people, would call to her from the far distant past, invoking the snake to shed its human skin, to come forth and claim her birthright. But Viper could not understand the meaning of the dreams. These leaders had been long dead yet seemed so real.

On her 18th birthday Viper's parents, by her request, took her to the Indian Reservation to learn the ways of the people. They had visited many times when she was younger, and she had always felt a kinship, longing and strange familiarity with the land and people. As the warriors danced around the ceremonial fire, someone called out to her.

Within the nearby forest someone called her name "Viper Moon", she heard the voices call. Instinctively she knew where to go, an eerie glow illuminated her path into the darkness of the woods.

As Viper walked to the green of the woods and the call of the wild, she felt the scales beginning to form on her hands and feet. As she reached the forest floor, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud hugged and blessed her to the bosom of Mother Earth. They watched as her fangs emerged, and little by little her metamorphosis became complete.

"From here you will procreate and multiply. Soon you will be joined by many more and at long last we will seek and exact our revenge on those who stole our birthright. You shall lead your people, not by war, but by the intelligence within your mind and that of your offspring and those who are already being prepared". The two chiefs spoke one after the other.

"By day, human you shall be, but by night, the beastly snake shall do your bidding".

Viper hissed. She knew exactly what she had to do. She now understood why she had always detested the human side of herself. Now, she would embrace it as her ally by day.

The wise leaders yelled their battle cry, "ay yi yi yi", raising their feathered spears in a last victory hurrah, before again disappearing as mysteriously as they had arrived.

A beautiful snake slithered on the ground. Viper had been reborn, a hybrid of all snakes combined, but a Viper in her true nature.

She heard the panicked call of her parents, they had been searching for her. So typical of her to wander off, they were saying, Viper had always been a bit of a wild child.

Oh, if only they knew how right they were, how close to the truth.

She emerged from the woods, the beautiful female daughter, smiling sweetly, her winsome face concealing her dark and ominous secrets. She would need her own place, her own space to become the savage beast.

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