Little Boy Of The Mountain T
--T--
The boy was stunned, and recoiled, and forgetting the snake for a moment, looked quickly at his hand. It was punctured with a single deep tooth-mark, for the serpents' head was too big for both it's fangs to pierce his one hand at the same time. The skin around the wound was raised in two flaps of ragged skin, but there was as yet no blood.
Strangely, he realized that there was no pain either, and had not been. All of his sensations had been driven by his fright, and his expectations. Yet he struggled to move the fingers of his wounded hand. He remembered the serpent then, and returned his weary gaze to it, but it was not there. It must have slipped silently and speedily into the thick undergrowth and disappeared from whence it came.
He looked again at his hand, and the bite mark remained. It had all really happened. His hand was warm. So were his pants. He had wet himself.
The mist had lifted, and the last shred of cloud and haze had blown away to the north, and a wan light had returned to the little clearing. He was in an obscure state of limbo.