Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 16: brought to you by snot

Because germs don't care, I don't know why, it doesn't even matter how hard you try, keep that in mind I designed this rhyme to explain in due time--all I know...

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Shay woke up wrapped in snake coils and coughing. The sound instantly alerted Curtis. A nasty taste speckled up into her mouth as phlegm dislodged, and her nose had blocked access to air. She sniffed hard, but snot had already dribbled and dried in her sleep.

"Aw crud..." she wheezed. This world didn't have tissues, or gal, anything that would count for a handkerchief.

Her snake companion's face crumpled with both fear and concern.

"But the snake skin was supposed to repel water," he said. "And I held you as you slept, I kept you warm all night."

She didn't bother telling him that she often got sick around her period. At least he had found her more cotton the night before to pad herself with, though her period should have slowed down by now.

His tongue flickered in the air over her skin along with his fluttering white fingers.

"No." His coils pressed her even closer, making it even harder to breathe. "No, no, no!"

"It's just a cold, I'm not dying."

But he didn't look convinced.

She hacked and gasped. "Lo-loosen up. Can't breathe."

He instantly loosened, looking, if possible, even more horrified. "Medicine," he said. "I have to get you medicine. A doctor. But the nearest village is..." His pallor, if possible, had paled further. "Golden root. He gave you that."

Holding her close to his chest, he slipped past the embers of their campfire and out of the din. The morning sun had just breached the horizon, covering the canopy and river with a fine golden membrane.

The fresh air, uninsulated by snake, made her shiver.

"Wait, what about my shoes?" She had to let her feet breathe the night before. Foot rot of the World War I trenches was a real thing.

"You don't need them. I'll carry you."

She begged to differ, but he had already lost the den behind them.

"Just hold on a second, I need to pee!"

Cracking a few more horrible sounding coughs probably helped persuade him. And she just managed to convince him to look away while she did her business too, but he must have been listening because the moment her panties were up he swept her up away, not even giving her the time to change pads.

Her legs swung from his grasp like dead things. She didn't have the energy to deny him.

He pressed through the fine fog of the morning, tongue flicking in and out. No branches so much as touched her skin, not that they'd have any room for new scratches. So much for that fine and beautiful complexion. If a bit of dirt made her fugly mugly, going through a bamboo meat grinder would make her horrific.

Soon, a pounding headache came into being, which she eased off by using Curtis's cool chest and moving her brow when that bit of skin warmed up. Turns out the cold-blooded thing was good for something.

At one point, he held her with only one arm, phenomenal in it's own right, so he could dig around. But she was too busy finding new places on her arm and top for running snot that she couldn't give it the ooh and awe it deserved. At some point, the chills became almost oppressive as he leaned over to wash something in the river.

"Eat," he pressed a knobbly, light brown root between them. It looked like a swollen hand that had had it's fingers clubbed till they swole to the roundness of fat mice.