Its wide mouth parted, showing just a hint of narrow white teeth. It didn’t walk, but slinked, each foot falling in front of the last as it passed within three feet of us. Large as it was, it managed to distribute weight too evenly, and used its tail to suspend some of its weight.
It uncoiled, setting a claw on the floor, and the old floorboards didn’t elicit an audible creak.
Head flowed into neck, which flowed into shoulder and body without a without prominent ridge, bump, bone or muscle to interrupt the sequence. Unlike a snake, though, it had four long limbs, each with four long digits, tipped with claws. Sleek, four-legged, and tall enough I couldn’t have reached its shoulder if I stood on my toes, it was wound around the pillar as a snake might be. It was hard to make out in the dim light that filtered in through the window, like an eel in dark water, and if it weren’t for the fact that we’d seen it approach, we might not have noticed it at all. A scattered set placed on the upper floor, and more well above head height on the lower one.Īside from the four of us, one other thing occupied the hayloft. The only light was that which came in through windows. I could see a table, some scattered papers, books, and a blackboard. The original barn’s door was still there, mounted on rollers. If we stood on the edge, we could look down at the floor below to see uneven floorboards on top of compacted dirt. A floor of old wooden slats reached only halfway down the length of the old building, what had once been a hayloft. What had once been a barn had been made into a warehouse, then abandoned partway through a third set of changes. Water ran around and below us, flowing over our bare feet, redirected from gutters to the building’s inside.
The air around us was stale, but it was still oxygen. For life to flourish on the most basic level, it requires four elements. How does it go? The first lesson, something even the uninitiated know.
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