"I was named after a flower, and just like the flower I'd been named after, I could never stand too much rain or too much sun. Just as the rain rotted the bulb of the flower, the sun cracked apart my carefully cultivated pallor. Just as the sun beat the juices out of the flower and induced a sort of lethargic droopiness, the rain liberated my carefully straightened hair back into the curls its nature seemed to demand. And with each re-sprung curl, a few green interlocking scales appeared around my feet. This had been happening ever since the boy drowned when the house caught fire.
For this reason, I wore a black scarf so that it covered my hair at all times, and I also wore it over my mouth to cover the newly evolved growth in my canine teeth that had started when I ate meat for the very first time in my life that day that the boy drowned: this ensured that my teeth weren't revealed until the appropriate moment.
When the appropriate – or perhaps I should say inevitable - moment had occurred, I always withdrew one of the flowers I had been named after from one of the soil-filled inside pockets of my cloak, snapping the stem off from the bulb, and tossing it onto the body of the victim. I then bent down, scraped the fingers of each of the victim's hands through my hair to straighten it, kissed them goodnight on the neck again, and walked away. I knew that if I didn't do this, my hair would continue to curl, and the scales would return to my toes. The crimes were never solved and innocent people of a different faith were blamed on occasions, but I had no choice.
But then I made a mistake and stupidly bit the wrong person – she was also a child, but looked older. So now there were two dead children.
Children are, of course, poisonous, and as a result I became sick.
I went home and was too sluggish to get up to replenish myself, so my hair curled uncontrollably and I slowly transformed from the feet upwards, scales spreading up to my waist, and eventually I had no recourse but to spill water from the bath down the steps to aid my progress, slither down the stairs, push open the waterway door, splash through into the lagoon, and kick away."
So she has confessed. So she is a citizen and not part of the approaching party at all. Indeed, she fears how they might treat her. She feels that she herself may have attracted them here. I confess that I fear what she might try to do in her attempt to get back onto dry land. I am more than a little worried as to what I've got myself into.For this reason, I wore a black scarf so that it covered my hair at all times, and I also wore it over my mouth to cover the newly evolved growth in my canine teeth that had started when I ate meat for the very first time in my life that day that the boy drowned: this ensured that my teeth weren't revealed until the appropriate moment.
When the appropriate – or perhaps I should say inevitable - moment had occurred, I always withdrew one of the flowers I had been named after from one of the soil-filled inside pockets of my cloak, snapping the stem off from the bulb, and tossing it onto the body of the victim. I then bent down, scraped the fingers of each of the victim's hands through my hair to straighten it, kissed them goodnight on the neck again, and walked away. I knew that if I didn't do this, my hair would continue to curl, and the scales would return to my toes. The crimes were never solved and innocent people of a different faith were blamed on occasions, but I had no choice.
But then I made a mistake and stupidly bit the wrong person – she was also a child, but looked older. So now there were two dead children.
Children are, of course, poisonous, and as a result I became sick.
I went home and was too sluggish to get up to replenish myself, so my hair curled uncontrollably and I slowly transformed from the feet upwards, scales spreading up to my waist, and eventually I had no recourse but to spill water from the bath down the steps to aid my progress, slither down the stairs, push open the waterway door, splash through into the lagoon, and kick away."
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