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You are Charlotte Fawkins, noted heiress, detective, adventuress, and heroine, cruelly trapped underwater (in the sticks!) after the completion of your quest to find your long-lost family heirloom. Tragically, nobody here l̶i̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u appreciates your talents, even Richard— the snake who lives in your head. Right now, Richard is swearing at you. This is never a good sign.
"Richard—" you say blearily. "Come on, you shouldn't <span class="mu-i">curse</span>—"
He had been leaning against the wall of your manse just a moment ago, his hands clasped to his forehead— you can still see his expression in your mind's eye. (But <span class="mu-i">what</span>? Fear? Distress? Despondency? Or are you overinterpreting simple exhaustion?)
However, your mind's eye is the only place the expression lingers: it has gone entirely from his face, replaced with something twisted and nasty and— you will admit it— frightening; it is <span class="mu-i">not</span> cowardice to be frightened here, unless it'd be cowardice for someone struck by lightning to be frightened of dark clouds. You have not seen this Richard for some time. You thought foolishly that it'd been packed away for good, that Richard realized it wasn't useful or necessary and he got just the same results from being nice, or at least civil, or at least his version of civil, and he didn't need to go through the whole—
"I <span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-s">shouldn't?</span></span>"
If it weren't blindingly obvious from the expression, his predatorial stance and tone seal it: this is a trap. If you aver it, he'll seize the opening. But if you deny it— if you recant your deeply held (and correct!) beliefs and kneel and grovel and tell him he can curse all he likes— well, that's the thing. You've tried that, once or twice, sucking up your vast pride in attempts to forestall the thunderstorm. Which is a damn good metaphor, because only God could forestall a thunderstorm, and it's just the same for Richard— only worse. Because he takes white flags for red flags; because he's a snake, and snakes eat floppy little fish, and eggs, and other innocent defenseless things.
So rolling over and dying will just make him hungry. Fine. You are a grown woman— more than that, easily more than that, you have a sword and magyckal powers (probably) and you just saved Gil's God-damned life, all by yourself, which makes you a <span class="mu-i">heroine.</span> And heroines may get frightened but they do not get <span class="mu-i">cowed,</span> not by stupid beady-eyed snakes, not even by snakes coiled half-against the wall like they're going to spring out and throttle you. You've been throttled before. You can do it again.
>[+1 ID: 4/(9)]
"You shouldn't," you repeat, and for kicks imagine the air smelling of ozone.
"Ah." Richard quirks a foreboding eyebrow. "So you think you can tell me what to do?"
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