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It felt like it would never end. The days were long and exhausting. People either loved you or hated you and if she were truly honest she disliked being hated just for being. She didn’t choose this. She was born just like anyone else and she lived just like anyone else lived. Just in a way that seemed to really scare people.
If she were really honest, it made her sad.
She wasn’t bad. She wasn’t ugly or scary or- well yes she was dangerous but so was everyone else! Everyone and everything was dangerous!
But maybe things would be different now? There was activity and there wasn’t usually activity when all the lights went off. She had two options as she felt a presence nearing her. She could ‘awaken’ and attack, or she could ‘sleep’ and let them do their worst.
For the sake of her burning curiosity, she ‘slept’. She didn’t move as she felt hands on her, didn’t lash out or fight or writhe.
Nothing much seems to happen. She’s moved from one place to another so she peeks and looks around, quickly noting that the people are still there. Quickly she goes back to ‘sleeping’.
She waits for a very long minute- two, then she feels something being dropped on her. It’s unintentional that she startles, twitching and rolling and there’s too much around her, there’s too much happening too fast now! The dim light from the people does out and she's surrounded and panic flares.
She’s in a box with a wriggling, writhing mass of her kind and she’s afraid.
She didn’t know that her prayers were about to be answered, even if it were to be in an unconventional way.
~0~0~0~
She had to settle eventually during the transport, she had to tame her fear and soon everything stilled but the contraption the box was inside. The others like her were just as afraid for the most part. Some completely unbothered which made sense for their kind. Halfway through their journey was when they all started hypothesizing, trying to figure out the where, when and why .
Maybe it’s for an exhibit?
Or maybe even a show? I’ve been taken out for a show before and it did happen pretty early.
Really? This early? Were you taken there with dozens of your friends? Huh?
Geeze no I wasn’t but it’s not like you know any better!
Oh please. You’re all being foolish. This is a kidnapping. They aren’t taking us for a show or a new exhibit, they're taking us somewhere new to either kill us or breed us. Either way I'd bet it’s for an extreme profit.
That sobers them all. Of course they weren’t being taken anywhere nice. Nice things didn’t happen to their kind.
The remainder of their ride was met with only silence. The sound of a rumbling engine the only companion to their darkening thoughts.
~0~0~0~
Dawn was quickly approaching, she could smell it on the air when the engine was finally cut and more sound emerged. The box was being lifted and nonsense voices whispered to each other as the package was taken to its final destination.
It took several long minutes, but finally the lid was lifted and there was a brief moment to see the faces of their captors. It was all too brief, they were thrown outward into a room and before they could gain their bearings or uncoil their captors were gone and they were stuck somewhere new.
It was like a house but not a house. Some of her brethren knew of houses. But it was different. It wasn’t nice, it was more ….well she didn’t know, she just knew it was different to what they called a house.
The early morning light started to shine through the cracks in the curtains and by the time their mass was untangled they just wanted to find someplace safe.
She, as well as all of the others, slithered about. Some under tables and chairs. Another few under or into a cabinet. She made her way onto a desk, knocking open a drawer in her ascent, she decided that would be her home now.
She curled inside the drawer, opened just a crack and slowly relaxed. There was something soothing about the darkness and the scent of ink and paper.
Maybe this wouldn’t be a bad thing?
~0~0~0~
As her track record kept proving, she was wrong once again. Only a few hours passed in blessed silence before the telltale sound of more humans made itself known. She peeked from the small crack in the drawer and watched a blonde woman throw open the curtains in the room. She noted her brethren remained hidden.
No one knew they were there yet.
Maybe if they just didn’t move and stayed real silent they wouldn’t be found!
That seemed to work for a good while, at least until another human came in with a very odd gait. She heard the newcomers voice greeting the others before it got closer.
“Why the hell am I here before that bastard is? That’s not fair. He should be here before all of us.” She felt the desk she was within tremble as the human settled on it.
“Edward I am literally two steps behind you.” sighed another voice, clearly quite used to this Edward and their antics. She could feel the tension building in her brethren. These ones seemed the type that were planning to stay.
Even she could hear the mirth in this Edward’s voice, “Yeah but I still made it before you.”
The other sighed once more and did something to cause Edward to shout a curse. He laughed as the Edward made his angry sounds, “Make yourself useful, grab some paper and ink from the first drawer on the left of the desk.”
She heard the other grumble some more, the Edward, “Yeah yeah, you’re lucky I’m fond of you now ya bastard and I don’t mind helping you slack in-” he cut himself off, and she knew why.
She was staring straight at him. He was very bright, like the sun. She wanted to like him, she wanted to bask in his warmth but humans weren’t kind to her.
“Edward? What is- what the hell?!” the other shouted, and it tore the Edward’s gaze from her. She took the chance to peek up and over the desk to see that the other human, tall and dark haired had opened a cabinet and her brethren had fallen on him. She gets to see the tall human stumble backwards and fall before all of the other of her kind began to make themselves known. The dark haired human seemed frozen in fear.
She wasn’t surprised. They would have to fight for their lives to get out of here.
(Luckily for them, the other humans in the office were used to Roy crying out in surprise and sometimes fear whenever Ed went with him into his inner office. The blonde was a gremlin of the highest order and though he loved, was fond of his CO. He liked to scare him.)
She slithered from the drawer as Edward slid from the desk with a surprising delicacy considering his odd gait. She felt herself truly shocked for the first time in her life when the blonde bent down and reached out toward one of her brethren, not a look of hate or distaste on his face. His eyes were bright.
She felt a bit of sadness when she saw her kin rear back to strike the hand, one of her more poisonous relatives, but the blonde Edward was fast and surprisingly careful as he caught her kin, “Hey, careful now. If you bit that you’d lose some teeth and then how’d you protect yourself?”
The snake in his hand seemed to settle in shock too, “Hey! Lieutenant, you guys got like a buncha empty boxes around? I need em!” the blond yelled and stood over his prone human friend. Certainly protective.
Not long after a tall man with a smokestick hanging from his mouth opened the door. He stared before dropping the boxes right inside, closing the door right back up without a word.
Edward grinned, “Thanks!” he called and carefully made his way to the box, “Sorry buddy butcha gotta go in here. I don’t wanna close the lid on you but I don’t want Roy to have a heart attack. I’ll be careful with your friends.”
She watched, not believing him. Nothing good ever happened to her kind.
But once more she was wrong. Edward was gentle as he went about gathering them up. Something in him must have known more about them than she thought as he carefully packaged them up. They weren’t tossed in unceremoniously. There was real care in his movements.
He even took a minute to help his Roy to his feet, “Go chill at your desk and ill clean ‘em up.”
His smile was like the sun, and the dark haired Roy listened, not even registering that she was still half in his drawer and half on his desk as she watched the sun human.
“How aren’t you afraid?” Roy asked.
Edward tossed another smile over his shoulder, “Cause they’re not scary. I mean they’re dangerous, but so am I. So are you. They’re easy to tell what’s up. You just gotta know their language. People are harder, ‘cause they can lie but snakes? They’ll always let you know they want you to back off.”
Yes! That’s exactly what she’d been saying for forever!
“Besides, look how damn cool they are!” he pat the top of the final box tenderly before joining Roy at his desk, pulling himself back up onto it and beside her. His brilliant eyes even more sparkly as he looked from his Roy to her . She had never had someone look at her like that before. Understanding and kindness and not distaste.
Roy seemed to finally notice her and he startled back, but Edward just reached out and she slithered up an arm that was certainly not flesh- she didn’t believe he had truly protected her kin’s fangs too!
“See? No harm at all. Just a sweet thing, curious.” She knew he was cautious, but she also knew she wasn’t putting out any dangerous signals. She wanted to bask in this golden human’s presence.
He let her wrap around his shoulders and settle there, looking at Roy. he still seemed stricken, but much less so. These humans must have quite a history to trust something that so deeply frightened you.
“Edward, please be careful.” Roy seemed to wheeze, his voice weak.
Edward only smiled and held out a hand, “You trust me?”
Roy looked faint but he nodded and he let Edward bring his hand to the golden one’s mouth. He bit the tip of the other’s glove and pulled it off before ever so carefully settling the bare hand on her scales.
She could feel the fearful, clammy skin. But she wasn’t trying to intimidate right now. She let him touch and she pulled her tail fully from the drawer so he could see the whole of her.
“Nothing scary when you know what to look for. She might even like you if you weren’t so damn scared.” he released Roys hand and brought his own to her scales. He was petting her and she practically melted.
Roy seemed to slowly settle in his skin, his hand resting near her body, on Edward’s leg. “Alright...maybe not so frightening...at least not while someone that knows them is here. If you weren’t- Ed there would have been a massacre.”
She tensed at that, but Edward just continued petting her, “It’s a good thing I was here then, huh? Now you know better. Maybe if this happens and I'm not around, call an expert. People are nasty enough to ‘em as it is. I bet I could get you to even like them. Or well at least this one.”
Oh he was baiting. She knew that Roy knew, she saw it in his eyes. A look that said he knew, but he was powerless to deny the sun before him. She could understand why.
“This isn’t because it’s red , is it?” he asks, that sigh from before once more in his voice.
Edward laughed, knowing he’d won as he picked up the rest of her body, draping it over himself. “That’s just a bonus! I’m gonna take ‘em to the proper places and I'm borrowing whoever doesn’t scream when I walk in there like this! Then i'm gonna find out what I need to know and we’ll name the beauty when you get home tonight!”
“Wait! Edward who said it could live with us!?”
But oh, her Edward was leaving with a skip in his awkward step, he didn't say anything or look back.
Maybe good things could happen to them. They just needed to find a good person- a good human with a good heart.