Tara's Legacy

Tara hardly knew Great Aunt 'Tilda any more.  Oh they'd been close when Tara had been much younger.  Over the years, though, Great Aunt 'Tilda's stories of magic and witchcraft and of strange gods and goddesses were relegated to myth and the stories of childhood.

Despite that, there was something about the old woman that both attracted and repelled Tara.  She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.  Maybe it was her choice in pets: the most deadly of serpents and spiders.  Tara knew (or at least had been told often enough) that the hideous creatures were just part of the old woman's business.  She milked them for venom.  Seems you need the venom to create the antivenin and it was worth a fair bit of money.  At least Great Aunt 'Tilda had never lacked for money as far as Tara knew.

Somehow, Tara expected the old woman to last forever but everyone dies eventually (even so the old woman had hung on for over a century).  Tara received the news at the university campus along with a strange wooden box that she'd been left in the will.  Tara had never asked for anything and had been truly surprised by the box along with a note in Great Aunt 'Tilda's steady hand (no eMail for her ever ... paper and pen was the only acceptable communication).

At first, Tara had trouble getting into the box until she read the note.  Most was in English but some was a strange poem in an even stranger language.  Fortunately, a transliteration into the phonetic symbols Tara had been taught as a child by Great Auntie herself.  Tara tried to read the poem to herself but something compelled her to say aloud the strange words.  Oddly, the clasp clicked open at the last word of the poem.

Inside were three pieces of jewelry.  All positively ancient but all beautiful in their own right.  A long gold chain with an amulet of a snake.  The snake had strangely compelling blue eyes of some gemstone (sapphire maybe, mused Tara).  She took the chain and put it on over her head.  It was beautiful but creepy in some way.  Tara had never been one to visit Great Auntie's business area and definitely hadn't handled any of the critters even when they'd been brought out.  The chain and amulet hung around her neck with the amulet hanging precisely between her breasts at the level of her heart.   A snake bracelet, too, was in the box.  Once more the preternaturally blue eyes of the snake on the bracelet was as compelling as the eyes of the amulet had been.  Without thinking, Tara slipped the bracelet on.  Finally, under another of Great AUntie's missives was a ring.  Once again, it was a snake with the strangely blue eyes.  Tara found herself slipping the ring onto her finger.

The missive was short and another of Great Auntie's poems in that strange language.  Once more, she found herself compelled to read the poem aloud.  Tara suddenly felt faint and found herself collapsing beside the fountain.  Her vision twisted and then cleared.  Shaking her head, she looked at her reflection.  Bright blue snake eyes stared back.  Eyes the same colour as those of the snake's in the jewelry.   She continued to feel dizzy but propped herself up on one arm.  From beneath her skirt, a long tail emerged, lengthening and growing.  Her legs tingled and within minutes, had vanished entirely.  For several minutes, she lay there uncomprehending.  Something had changed but the spell was still working upon her body and mind.

When her mental fog had cleared, she found herself the centre of a group of people who'd watched her transformation.  Still lying beside the fountain, Tara looked down to where her legs had been.  She now had a brown snake's tail over 8 meters in length and she must now weigh a half tonne.  The shock of her transformation was written on the faces of all present: a mixture of shock and horror and (for some) pity.  A man forced his way through the crowd.  Her new vision made identifying anyone hard but this man she knew.  Her boyfriend James knelt beside her, tentatively touching her huge new body.

"Tara," he stammered.  "You've changed."

Woman: Wildplaces
Snake: Scratzilla