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"...A 'real' snake's a misnomer. You mean to say..." Henry's fingers are twisting in on themselves. "...a <span class="mu-i">literal</span> snake? Located in your physical attic, in your house, above the water? And it spoke to you at length?"
You tense. "I'm telling the—"
"I don't mean to doubt you," Henry says, unconvincingly. "This is just an unusual, eh... was it a large snake?"
You hold your hands out to either side of you.
"That's not big enough," McWhatever says. "They have to get fucking <span class="mu-i">big</span> before they talk, pretty sure. Room-length. Unless she means mimicry—"
"I don't <span class="mu-i">mean</span> mimicry." The pot's back on the boil: you are beginning to remember why the last meeting with Henry ended up the way did. "I mean he talked. Like a normal person talks."
"If you don't want to talk about why you did the ol' somersault," Whatsherface says, "you can just say—"
"Quiet," Henry says, and she does. He has placed his fingertips flat down on the marble. "Charlotte. You are telling the truth as you know it to be?"
You should've yanked his stupid line so hard it gave him a hernia. "<span class="mu-i">Yes!</span> What else would I be—?!"
He raises a hand. "Then you're owed our trust. That's the end of it."
Whatsherface and McWhatever look at several interesting points on the ceiling. You brace yourself against the wall. "I will admit," Henry continues, "that your description of your talking snake doesn't make a lot of sense, given their physiology. I do not—" He raises a hand to halt your argument. "—I do <span class="mu-i">not</span> think we can say, however, that it's altogether false. We should take the facts as we were given. You found a snake-like creature in your attic. Spontaneously?"
"I guess," you say. "I wasn't looking for a..."
"Spontaneously. And it began to speak to you, and it told you truths you couldn't have known, and it convinced you to drown yourself. Resulting, after what I'm sure was a long and circuitous journey, in you coming right here."
You're not sure if you like the sound of this, actually.
"Taking those facts as sacrosanct, the logical conclusion is that your 'snake' was not in actuality a snake, but something taking snake-shape. An emissary. A creation of It, directly sent to provide knowledge and guidance, and to set you off in a direction of surely critical purpose, though we may not yet know what that is."
Okay, knowledge and guidance, fine. (Mean guidance.) On a path of critical purpose... well, Richard wanted you to do <span class="mu-i">something</span> with the Crown, even if he never explained it. It still doesn't sit totally right with you. "He <span class="mu-i">said</span> he was a snake."
"That might be easier to accept," Henry says, "than it being a creature of God. Just a thought."
>[1] Responses? Reactions? Further questions for the question pile? (Write-in. Optional.)
>[2] Continue.
