Pythoness: The Beldame's Daughter

"Stir the pot," spake the witch.
"I find the ingredients quite pungent
to my already nettled concerns,"
the small girl replied.

"No need to admit the obvious,"
the crone stated in a light cackle.
"The bubbles and the froth tell me
it is almost ready."

"And when it is prepared to perfection,"
the young woman dared to inquire,
"what use will you find then
for this ungodly concoction?"

The old hag let out
a sickly giggle of sorts,
replying to the girl,
"I would think you
should recognise the brew, dear..."

"What?" exclaimed the woman/child,
as fear crossed her lovely brow.
"I don't believe I understand the meaning
of such a riddle proposed to me."

"You should not play innocent
with one who so much better
knows the rules of the game, love,"
the bedraggled beldame crooned.

"For I so loved this world,
I gave you all
that I might give a child;
a heart, a mind,
even my own blackened soul,
and you gather the audacity
to deny me the very
truth of your own countenance?"

The girl grew cold at the witch's words,
for she had all but lost
the need to kill,
and yet there was somewhere,
deep within her still, a hunger
for the drip and drop of blood.

It was the heart of life she so desired.
It was the birth of vision,
yet denied her that she seeked.

The girl was at a painful loss
for words to the witch's own.

She hung her sorrowed face in shame,
to hide it from the hideous reality
that was to be ever hers,
and slowly walked,
to grasp in both trembling hands,
the huge wooden ladle,
that lay drowning, deep
in the bubbling green-grey froth.

"That is it, little one,"
cooed the old hag.
"Just skim the surface for any promise
that may not have yet
cooked off from the hatred."

The girl/child sighed,
and moved as if edified,
no longer able
to call up her own will,
for she was as she was;
evil and hungry,
and the world was as ever;
ripe for the taking.

She looked up
at the crooked, haggard beldame,
and laughed,
"Today shall be a fine day
for the world to die!"

The old woman beamed,
and moved to gather
the child in her own bony arms.

"Yes, love," she said,
cracking her bone-cold face
within a wicked smile,
"I do believe
you have my heart after all."

The witch pushed one thin finger
over the yellow scales that had begun
to replace the pale softness of skin
when the girl was still yet untouched
by all the pure evil of her very soul,
and passed a rheumy gaze
over her daughter's new form.

The hugeness of the yellow snake
wound its way around
the wrinkled throat of the old woman,
wrapping it thrice to turn the cragged visage
a new and sickly shade of blue.

Clouded eyes popped loud from sockets
in what seemed little more than a skull,
and the swollen tongue pushed wet between
thin lips, to dangle helpless against
the point of chin ravaged with warts.

Strangely enough, the snake smiled,
and let go the deathly grip
upon the now less-than-lifeless form.

The witch's foul and broken body
slumped to the flagstone.
The snake slinked back towards the brew,
to peer into the bubble and froth once more.

For she was as she was;
evil and hungry,
and the world was as ever;
ripe for the taking.

And take it, she would;
not with regret, or any remorse
or misgiving.

She would pour the fluid enmity
over all the world
which could never be her own.
And she would watch it writhe
and melt into puddles of loss.

And then, when it was wholly murdered,
she would clew it with her dark mind,
to pitch the thick saddened mess into
her gaping maw, to swallow, deep
the empathy so foreign to her.

The drips and drops of life;
beet red and coursing in front
of her hooded eyes,
she would lap up with the slick whip
of her forked tongue, in sticky gobs.

For she was as she was;
evil and hungry,
and she was as she had always been,
the beldame's daughter.
And she was as she would always now be;
she was the Pythoness.