>>6135940And it wasn't too soon. At fifteen you left home, travelling through the jungle until you reached a river. Negotiating for passage with the three boats you found camped on the shore after a day didn't work. They were suspicious of the huge serpentine creature sliding out of the trees. So you waited until dark and stowed away on the largest boat. You were caught and chased off, but not until you'd arrived in Baghat, a small town, where you stowed away in a cart after someone accused you of being a maneater, and before the rabble-rouser could start a hunt for you.
From there you travelled from village to village, winning wrestling contests, hunting small prey to eat, until you reached the coast. You found a coastal city, small but beautiful, visited by few, beautiful Dhows.
Years of your life were spent in the gutter there. Or rather, the stormwater drains. You are small for a male Naga, you've never had as much food as a growing male should have, and so swimming through narrow openings, hunting fish and even rats beneath the city was easy enough, preferable to thievery. You're quiet, quick, but it's low to rob the poor, the desperate, the commoners, when you can simply hunt.
And you enjoy it. You're drawn to water, your scales suit the ripples and darkness of deep, flowing water perfectly, though you hadn't had the nerve to swim in the sea yet.
But you thought that day was close when a gigantic ship, cannon ports bristling, sailed into Harbor full of strange folk wearing strange clothes. Pirates? Privateers? Buccaneers? They ignited wanderlust in you, and you snuck aboard their ship in a new, coveres lifeboat, to leave behind your life of petty theft and petty prey for a life of adventure!
Until. Well-
>(2/3) 
