Home Day 2

[Word bank: Speed Drawer. Halt Order. Use Possess.]

[Do any snakes transform? Yes, and Any visitors? No Increase connection. 2]

When Delilah woke up on her first morning, her back creaked uncomfortably. The bed hardly deserved the title; it was a pile of loose straw with some sheeting to keep it from spreading all over the floor and a thin blanket. It smelled musty too. She wondered what it would take to get something nicer. As part of her effort to start anew, she'd left her old hoard behind. She had nothing.

But she didn't have long to think about that, because there were a lot of children staring at her. It was hard to count them because they slid around each other, so it was hard for her to keep track of which was where. They were all bald with skin patterned red, yellow, and orange on their heads, although the rest of their skin was of the same ranges of color she expected to see of a human. When they saw she was awake, they started excitedly talking to each other, in a language sibilant with S sounds. With some effort, Delilah could understand their snakey dialect.

Because, as it turned out, they were the snakes she had scared out. Or rather the snakelings, hatchlings of a small clutch of eggs that had been laid in the protected warm house before their mother slithered off to do whatever it is that adult snakes do. The snakelings were of two camps. Some wanted her out, and forcefully. Others were grateful she'd left their nest--although they were irritated by the mess she'd made of the rest of the house--and were inclined to try living with each other. [Are the groups evenly split? 5: Yes]

Delilah tried to talk. [Do they listen? 6: Yes, and] The snakelings pause and look at her. She thinks they're shocked that she can speak their tongue. She even emulates their sibilant lisp, allowing her tongue to fork and grow thin. "Peace cousins, I mean no harm." The buzz of their speech begins again. She thinks there's about 6 of them, now that they are more still, obviously siblings in feature although they vary greatly in their coloration.