UNDER CONSTRUCTION - don’t delete please
In a small town there lived a girl named Seno. Yet everybody called her Stheno as that was how she pronounced her own name since she had a very bad lisp. Because of that lisp, and her strange-looking purple hair which seemed to stretch out in all directions away from her head, she was bullied in school and treated like an outcast by the townspeople.
She could not understand why the people were so mean to her so one day she got the idea that people would like her if she showed everyone how friendly she was. So she gathered and bought the ingredients for all her favourite food and drinks, put them in a cauldron and mixed a drink. “What a delicious looking green!”, she thought while filling the drink in little flasks. She put all flasks in a bag and walked from door to door planning to hand them out as a present. However, the reaction of the people was very different from her expectations. They told her to go away, accused her of wanting to poison them with this disgusting looking drink and poured the drink on the ground.
It was already nightfall when Seno arrived at the last house in the town and again had the door slammed shut in front of her. She was in tears and went to hide in the town’s shrine so she could cry undisturbed. It was this moment when she layed her eyes on the town’s holy artifact, a magical weapon which had defended the town against strangers for decades, that she realized that the town society despised everything that is foreign or different. Seno came to the conclusion that this could no longer be her home. Stealing the artifact she secretly fled and ran into the wilderness.
The night had become very dark and cold and she did not really know where she was going but without thinking about it she just kept running. Until there suddenly was no more ground under her feet and she fell three meters down into a hole. After the initial shock she noticed alarming sounds. Hissing could be heard all around her in the darkness. Pairs of gleaming red and yellow eyes appeared. “Pleasssse, sssspare me!”, she whimpered. Despite her imploration the eyes kept coming closer to her. Seno almost fainted when she felt the contact with scaly skin. Yet there was no bite and despite being nearly completely wrapped by multiple snakes she was not strangled. In fact she felt warm and comfortable and fell asleep after a while.
Upon waking up she found nourishing roots and mushrooms lying next to her. This hospitability and kindness shown to her by these supposed “beasts” was much more than the townspeople ever did for her. The snakes cared for the girl and they loved to hear her speak with her lisp as it sounded beautiful to them. She knew that this should be her new home.
With time she even learned to understand the language of the snakes and got to know their problem. Humans would sometimes raid the pit that the snakes inhabited and mindlessly kill snakes on the hunt for “treasures”. Being human herself and knowing how they think she devised plans and strategies how to defend against invaders. She was determined to protect by all means what she now considered to be her family. Her appearance gradually became more similar to her snake friends and she earned so much of their admiration that they regarded her as their queen.
