Gwydion crept inside, “Hello?” He called. A large chasms in the centre of the cave gave off strange green light, throwing stalactites and stalagmites into sharp relief.
A voice hissed in the dark, “who comes to my den? Who dares disturb me?”
Gwydion tried to peer into the shadows, he knew it was polite to look someone in the face when talking to them, “Just me, Gwydion.”
“What is this? He speaks? What is a Gwydion?”
“Not a Gwydion, thats my name. I’m a human.”
“Man? I have known many called ‘man.’ All wretched. All deceitful. Now… all stone. As a man, you are not capable of honesty. Of truth.”
“But I am.”
But the voice continued as if it hadn’t heard, “As a man, you exist only to break a women’s heart. Shallowness and fear are your bane. Come closer, and I will destroy you.” “You don’t need to do that. Not everyone is like that. I don’t think I’ve ever broken a womens heart. I try and be nice and polite. You can’t judge everyone before you have meet them.”
“The foolish man thinks he is different? If you truly believe so then reveal your true self.”
“How?”
“Hear me in earnest and respond in kind. A blind man asks you to describe the sunset.”
Gwydion considered. Once he could have been that blind man, never having seen the sunset, locked away in the dark. He wasn’t the most poetic of people, but he tried to consider how he would have described the beauty he had only now discovered in this world to the sun descend at days end. “I would speak of a flame dwindling in a rolling sky, and of heavenly fingers which trace the land with warm, dry pools.”
The voices hissed, weather in agreement or not Gwydion couldn’t tell. There was a pause then it spoke again, “A poor girl offers to sell you a rotten apple from her basket.” Gwydion had been poor his whole life, poor and alone and very often hungry. His voice was soft as he replied, “If I had money I would share it with her to buy riper apples. We could sit and eat them together.”
The voice was harsh, “You would sit with her? Take what you pretended to offer?”
“I know what it is like to be hungry and doing whatever you can to survive. The biggest hungry is not always for food, but for someone to listen and hold you and tell you it will get better.”
“So if an old man, who reeks of the worlds’s worst stenches, asks for shelter…”
“I would invite him in.”
There was a long pause, and Gwydion listened to the drip of distant liquid, happy enough to wait in the cool dark. Eventually the voice hissed, “You have a pure heart child, and you speak the tongue of snakes, approach and look at me.”
With that Gwydion walked around the deep chasms in the floor and then looked up at the shadow in the deepest dark corner. He was surprised to be meet with a tall women, with green skin and hair made of tiny snakes, each hissing quietly. Now close he could make out there tiny voices, “He smells like dirt.” “And lighting!” “Snake eyes.” “Scruffy.” “Speaker!”
Gwydion blinked a few times, entranced. And before Gwydion’s eyes her skin lightened, into a normal honey tan, and the dark black snakes in her hair lighten into a golden yellow. Her eyes darkened from slate grey into a deep blue. Then the women’s voice made the others quieten, “So, it is true. You are not stone.”
Gwydion gulped, then squeaked, “I could have turned to stone?”
“If you were not worthy, yes, you would have turned to stone.”
“Oh.”
—-
A medusa!! And a parsle tongue is best to talk to her, so Harry gets a friend. Finally.
Comment on To Freak is Divine
Adam29 on Chapter 11 Mon 11 May 2020 03:09PM UTC
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