The snake cannot help but notice the tension that ripples through the body of the stranger, and she relishes the sight of it. There it was in her mind’s eye, the face of the child who had been all alone, such a similar recoil had happened to that youngster before the end came. It had been quick, at least, and brutal. And with no point other than simply because she was there, and the child had been alone.
And no one had ever known it was her.
She coils like a slithering serpent, watching the restoration of composure across her body, and listens intently. It wasn’t often she was settled enough to simply stand and listen to stories and tales spoken to her, but Maraigh stands silent and pays attention.
One would think Maraigh carried marks from wars, but none were significant. She had been born into a dark world, taught from an early age and twisted by her dam, who had despised her sire but had birthed her due to, more or less, losing a bet with him. So Maraigh existed from spite, and her spite had come with it’s own series of unfortunate events.
She knew her sire was gone. She knew her mother was dead, burned to nothing in a river of molten rock.
And she had fought on, facing everything in her path and consistently fighting her way - how else could she feel alive?
“It sounds like a place I once knew, when I was a child,” she admits. She remembers the pungent scent, but it had not been war - it had been slaughter. Her mother and her cohorts had become mercenaries, so she too had followed suit.
And perhaps this is why. “I am unaware of how many I have. I couldn’t even tell you what mark came from who, as I don’t recall the circumstances in which I was given each one. I was struck, I bled and I savaged them in return, and it is by some fluke I am not yet dead,” she says, her teeth bright white against the dark of her lips.
“For I cannot feel it. To fight is to feel alive… and it is as close as I get to it,” she says. A strange answer, perhaps, but one none the less. It was no secret of hers that she was broken, a terrible trait that would at least never be passed to a child.
And after a moment, the woman speaks her name, “I am Maraigh.”