ParselMouth

• Seren Weeks, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2016

One cold night, a toddler no more than a year old, woke up to the sound of the wind blowing through the pines out the front of her house. They rustled and whistled although, it did not scare her. I’m sure in every other story much like this one they tell about the blue eyes glistening in the moonlight, although her brown eyes didn’t and nor did her hair. She crawled out of her wooden cot and out to the garden, via her dog flap. Her curly brown long hair and brown eyes made her unrecognisable in the moonlight. She toddled down the footsteps and to the front of her house. Silence was in the air. Not a soul was making a noise except the violent wind. Dark blue clouds now covered the moon, although the light shone from behind. The child hesitated for a minute, then turned around and headed for the door. Walking up the path with a crunching noise provoked the creature that lied within the bushes next to the pathway. A slithering sound turned the child’s attention to the bush, where two big, fluorescent green eyes stared deep into the child’s eyes. The child hesitated for a minute, then began walking towards the door. This must of made to creature mad because it slithered out of the bush. The child turned around, a large great big shadow lifted itself up, with its big green eyes. She just stared at the creature. The moons light became brighter and shone behind the creature making out the shape of an overly large snake. Very fast, the creature dived down to strike at the child, missing as she tripped backwards. The moon, still covered by the clouds was becoming more visible as the big blue clouds moved along making it more revealing more of it. The creature dived down one more sinking it teeth into her foot, as the moon became fully visible. As the the creature’s teeth sunk into the foot the moonlight shone into the creature’s eyes, making it shriek with pain. Silver liquid oozed out of the child’s foot, and the teeth marks became deep green. The girls hair became black and eyes now a fluorescent green The creature threw its head around and fell to the ground, waking the girl’s parents. They ran out to the door, as the door opened, the creature slithered away. The girl shrieked and her parents went to her aid. She was completely fine, and the two teeth marks on her ankle had stopped bleeding silver and had just left to circles of deep green etched in her foot. She didn’t have much pain either. This is the girl who could now, after seeing a snake, could speak to it. A conversation in a language that nobody else could understand, except her, and the snake.