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ACT IV: Worship

My crawling became less desperate and more methodical. I lost weight steadily through starvation and growing daughters and I was better able to grasp the ground under me past the depth of my scaled torso. I would push up, heave my abdomen forward and then settle down. I'd rest for an hour or so, recovering and then repeat. I made much better time that way. Behind me stretched an enormous groove in the ground, patterned regularly with belly ups and claw marks to either side. For most intents and purposes I was a large moving hill and to my chagrin, wildlife crept in and lived upon me despite the best efforts of my scrabbling body servants. With flesh stretching down to the ground at all times and flying the height of a large hill up to my broad back, it was difficult staying clean or even sanitary.

The bugs were the worst as they crept in under the scales and learned that there was defenseless flesh underneath. But there were other surprising oddities. The air carried with it dust and dirt and this settled and collected on odd spots of my body, especially in the folds towards my shoulders and under my hind legs. Grass and pollen was carried also so of course plants began to grow as well. Where I was especially lush, birds and bats would come to stay, then even larger animals somehow found their way up, mice, rabbits even coyotes at times. There was simply no keeping them off, not without a lot more hunters to turn that wildlife into more valuable meat.

My meat decreased at a steady rate, faster because I was forcing myself to grow again. Unlike my former body, I found resistance to get all the processes up and running again, but when I did manage to flick them all on, they ran continuously and without complication. I was able to walk for a bit, dragging my belly, then walk for longer, dragging a narrower profile through the dirt. I left no trees or shrubs or grass behind me. I ate everything I could reach, satisfied that my lack of mobility would preserve the vast majority of life here.

Then, quite suddenly, the desert loomed ahead of me, dry and seemingly endless. I swallowed wearily. My enlarged gut had long since become an annoyance rather than a virtue. I salivated heavily as hunger pangs tore through my middle. I decided to travel either west or east rather than face the desert. However, that night as I lay ready to sleep for a time, my mind wandered and felt something familiar in the distance. The bright ones. It surprised me, I had not felt them since leaving the old continent and I had long since stopped thinking about them. But they were undoubtedly here, and to the north somewhere. My interest and curiosity were roused. I wished very much to meet these things, and I wondered if they offered good conversation and perhaps better eating. It was not long after that when I became to trek towards the north.

Thinking of the bright ones kept my spirits up as my belly went on empty. The frequent pauses I needed between dragging my gut in an awkward standing crawl did allow me to work on that source of annoyance. I attacked the gut, eating away at it. It was not too difficult or dangerous. It was empty and folded in on itself anyways. Once the former folds were safely fused together, I could reabsorb the remaining tissue. It didn't change the fact that I was still hungry, but I anticipated the day when I would have something to eat and I did not want to need so very much to fill myself. Similarly, I worked on my uterus, but there was only so much that could be done without the nice tension of daughters filling it and I found there was little call for them in this arid abyss I was wading through. I conserved my energy. Being laden down with excess bulk was hard, having little or no body fat later on would be much worse.

I did lighten. I lightened so much that my belly only dragged a little and then not at all as I waddled across the dry dirt. I decreased across my shoulders, hips and tail as well. I did drag my tail behind me as I walked, but later on as I quickened my pace, I found it pulling me so I made the effort to lift it. It got easier to move and I made better time, but all the while I knew I was eating through my reserves, reserves I would want later on to make daughters. Far away to the south and east, I felt the carefree thoughts of my carrier daughter, diligently gathering flesh for me, so I was not so bad off as I could have been. She delighted herself with her growth and with food and thought of little else. If she made for poor talk, then at least I knew she was going to be content later on when her job would be to hold on to her bulk for when it was needed. Ever I beaded on the bright ones that I felt ahead. Eventually, I knew I would find them

I was waddling slowly across the desert when I finally did meet a bright one. I spotted it in the distance as I lifted my head high. It was quite strange to look at. Four legs, furred and smooth in alternate places and quite piebald with several different clashing colors. The strangest was that I definitely made out two distinct heads as it ran along the terrain at speed. "Two heads." I thought bemused. "It's rather unorthodox, but perhaps that explains why their minds are so bright." I tried to imagine such a creature, but the more I thought about it the less sense it made. Two heads, two brains? Where did the stomach start and the gut end? How many organs were duplicated and to what end? No, no, something was very wrong here. I had to get closer to investigate.

The bright one however spotted me a long ways off and made in the opposite direction and it was not long before it disappeared over the horizon. I sagged wearily onto my belly, no longer as thickly cushioned as before. At my feet, I spied a tall cactus of the variety that grew sparsely around here. Thoughtlessly, I pulled it up by its shallow roots and threw it into my dry mouth. The flesh was thick enough not to be bothered much by the spines. The cactus was of little nutritional value, but I was grateful for the water inside. It felt good to have something for my stomach to gnaw on for a little while. I rested without sleeping and then continued on my slow march in the direction the bright one had disappeared to.

These sightings repeated themselves over the next few days. The next time, there were more bright ones, and then still more. They gawked at my hulking, mountainous form and then retreated past the range of sight only to return a few hours later or the next day. They seemed to be excited.

They did start venturing closer, especially as I made my way north. And I saw that they did not have two heads. They were astride four legged creatures I had often spied running in the distance and who I had vicariously tasted through daughter flesh. I greatly hungered to taste these bright ones now and then know the mysterious thoughts that might be running inside their minds, so much more expansive than the usual order of mammal. Inside, I quickened several large flyers as might be able to catch them on their mounted steeds and get to know them for me.

In the meantime, they came closer and closer with each scouting and I plodded onwards, never changing my speed. Eventually they came quite close at hand, less than a mile away. Their animal companions who served as mounts for the bright ones nickered and scared easily at being so close to my massive form. Since they were intent upon me, I reached out and brushed my consciousness against their minds which shone like miniature suns from the background of the earth.

And I was appalled when they recoiled from my touch. They did not mingle and be friendly like the minds of daughters, but rather backed up or set up barriers before me. The expressions I saw on the bright ones' faces did not change. Perhaps the old one among them was the only one whose face showed any awareness of what was happening. I backed up and then tried to apply myself to him.

Across the way, the old bright one suddenly jerked clutching his temples. Shortly he fell out of his saddle entirely, then he was on his feet and shouting to his companions. I did not know what had happened. I had tried pushing myself upon his mind, trying to feel a way past all the hardness of blocks, squeezing on all sides so it could not slip away. And then something gave, forcing a small degree of mingling and communication, but the bright one was afraid, in awe and afraid. "Demon." he called me and I knew that was a terrible thing because I was in his mind and understood through his understanding. Then I backed away, surprised and hurt.

The humans fled. I knew that was what they called themselves now and a good deal more as well. I knew that they lived in a community of humans, a village, a tribe grouped together and largely interrelated by sexual reproduction. They were very social animals and more, they were developed in so many clever ways from anything else I had ever seen in my long life. Language, spoken language, how queer. The symbology rankled, but I understood the need for it. They did not know mind-speak such as I had with my daughters who were also my flesh. They were tool users and masters of lower beasts who served them. Such things they crafted, images taken from the mind of the old one, but which had little meaning to me. But I was delighted nonetheless once I had a chance to understand. But this "demon" word he used, that upset me. I did not wish to bring any displeasure to these little ones. I would try to make them understand. But to make them understand, first I had to fully understand them.

But another chance did not come. The humans did not return to me and I could feel them in the distance. The nearest group of them began to move away towards the north and west. Perhaps they had no desire to know me. Perhaps all one got among bright ones was a first impression. The thought depressed me. Of course, there was no catching the bright ones, not unless I dropped half my remaining weight and walked at all hours of the day and night. No no, I'd bungled my first contact with the bright ones. What a sour, anticlimactic resolution to a dream so long in waiting.

I was actually despondent, though it did not keep me from my northward march. The land had become more prairie than desert now, but it was still pretty desolate. I managed a small herd of a dozen grazers who though not able to sustain me, provided a much needed snack once and a while when they fattened. The much larger flyers matured inside me still, almost ready.

Before they were ready, however, they instead came swiftly and during the night when I was fast asleep. I did not hear them but when they had come so close that their minds blazed around the edges of mine, I did come awake with a jolt. Two dozen men were here and not just here in the vicinity, they were within neck's length of me. I could tell from the feel of them that they were males all, and young and brash and full of violence and vigor. I did not like the feel of their emotions at all nor could I tell precisely their location by mind sense alone. I rose my head up, peering into the night. The sound of baying horses reached me and then the cry of tiny voices that ran towards me. I looked down in puzzlement. What was their intention?

They had been coming towards my head. They had actually gotten within a stone's throw before I lifted it up out of reach. When I did, they began charging towards my chest, crying and chanting the whole way. Bemused, I watched. Their minds were a storm of emotions, I did not know how they could think at all, perhaps they weren't at that.

They did reach my chest which protruded at length over the ground and they began to climb up the scaled side of it with admirable brashness. By now, I could sense that they as a group meant to harm me. Of course, I could not take such a threat seriously, but they were quite tenacious. I rumbled softly in contemplation of what to do. The vibration across my fatty chest caused several of the men to loose their grips on my scales and have to readjust themselves.

If my flyers had been ready, it would have been an easy matter to snatch them off of my hide and deliver them easily into my waiting mouth so that I might finally get to know them. However, even if I were to force one out now, it'd be half a day before her wings had dried off sufficiently to fly at all. Even that amount of time was too long given these circumstances. Brushing them off with a claw or otherwise smashing them would waste the meat and more importantly the essences would be lost. I had to get them into my mouth somehow.

I craned my neck over to where they were crawling up the slope of my shoulder. It was a little difficult, given the fleshiness of my neck, but I'd lost so much weight in the time since I'd eaten my former body. Just a little further.

The humans began to hoot and holler as I stuck out a wandering tongue towards them, straining awkwardly. One of them lost his grip on my and fell, screaming to meet death on the ground far below him. Several more of them managed a more controlled descent along the grain of my scales. When they hit the ground they ran in panic in the direction their horses had gone. Of the remainder, one managed to launch some sort of projectile which lodged itself in the skin of my tongue. It twitched a bit involuntarily, but it was truly not much worse than a particularly deep cactus needle.

The feel of their minds was very confusing, like but not like animal minds. In their fear they twanged together, almost merging on some levels. Such was the storm of emotion I sensed inside of them, I did not know how they could pay attention to their bodies at all.

Reaching them, even with my tongue at its full length was useless. They had happened to climb a particularly close curve of my shoulder that was impossible to reach with the current thickness of my neck. As a last resort, I whistled to my body servants. They were quite smaller than any of the humans, but it was my hope that with the darkness and their awkward location, hanging onto the side of my scaled shoulder that my daughters would have sufficient advantage.

Indeed, it went as I had hoped. They came from the far side of my neck, descending from above. With their long delicate claws, they moved gracefully from one handhold to the next without effort and at speed. If they grasped the hands that the humans were using to cling to the side of me, they proved quite helpless. They could not manage the sheer weight of a human body for long, but they merely had to bring them into range of my questing tongue...

Two more humans perished in the attempt to save them. They were able to partially free themselves from the hold my lizard-like daughters had on them and they dragged both down to smash against the ground. Darting my head down with all the speed I could muster, I managed to save both daughters' essences. Their lighter bodies were merely broken by the fall and managed to hold onto life some moments for the feat. After that harrowing bit of fear, I was able to bring my head back to my shoulder and into my waiting jaws the remaining ten men were thrown.

Their essences bled into me as their bodies traveled the length down my neck. The effect was somewhat anticlimactic. Long eons of wondering about these creatures had predisposed me to expect something like a burst of light upon devouring one of these creatures. Instead each human yielded but a single essence, no more than usual. However, as I sat and digested and had the opportunity to get to know these new addition, I did manage to sense the differences.

Each human essences stood out on its own for starters. Essences of species and even related species tended to clump together and form a single voice. However each human essence tended to remain separate, almost as if they repelled on another. It was quite strange, but perhaps the merging would occur over time. Moreover, each human essence retained far more information that I typically gained by eating an animal with more and clearer memories, skills and knowledge all patterned into particular flavors of light. It was wonderful how mutitexural it all was and I soaked it in, gaining understanding of the humans' cultures, their beliefs attitudes and prejudices, even from such a small selection as I had now.

These humans were even stranger than I had imagined. I had thought them to be quite like me in thought, but they weren't, or at least they chose not to be. It was quite strange a sensation, each man having so much in common and yet their mode of thought were all entirely unique, even human to human. Little wonder why they did not mix very well. I decided I must have a greater sampling to make any real decisions regarding the race as a whole.

Laying on my side a while later, I managed to pass eight large flyers. Daughters with six limbs, whip-like tails and sharp talons for catching and carrying off smaller prey. They should prove quite apt at plucking humans from the saddles of their steeds. "You know what to do." I told them after they had laid themselves out, drying in the sun for a time. Rather than answer, they flew off as a tan scaled flock of great beating wings, enthusiasm for the hunt singing in their breasts.

Because the humans were fairly close at hand, I had them delivered struggling and in person to my hulking body, a daughter usually taking off a limb or two with a deft crunch of teeth to sustain themselves for the effort before dropping them in. Once I had a hundred or so human essences inside of me, my understanding of humanity began to grow appreciatively and I could begin making correlations.

The human village made great pains to move away, but I followed them and naturally they could not escape my great winged hunters. They were all so very concerned about individual life as they lived and thought at such breakneck speed. It was little wonder I could make little sense of their thoughts. Might as well try to measure the pattern of waves on a vibrating chord. It was all moving along and changing moment to moment. What I had taken initially as great complexity in thought was simply the effect of simpler thoughts, blurred by activity.

Animals were easy by comparison. Usually they only thought of the same things over and over, one thought of a short list, even if they did hum quite like humans. But unlike animals, the list of potential thoughts and feelings for humans seemed endless and the list grew by volumes with every human life that joined me for the journey.

Eventually, the first human village was spent, but by that time the locations of several other human habitations had been located. Obviously bringing me human bodies one by one would not work for gathering the wide spread population here. In fact, as I grew into the bulk of my body, I was becoming dissatisfied with my diet as a whole.

The desert had passed behind me and now I was north of it in forested lands. However, there seemed never enough trees at hand to satisfy. In the jungles to the south, I could bite into a great mass of tangled greenery and retrieve a mouthful. Here though the trees grew more sparsely and I had to yank them out one by one. Analyzing the data in my mind, I found that the effort of pulling, swallowing and then digesting the tree nearly equaled the amount of nutrition I got from it, never mind the effort of walking, getting up, begetting daughters and all the rest of the things I had to do. This despite the fact that the land was not truly desolate, not without being utterly unfair to other climes.

One day, I had to take a good long look at myself. I raised a great claw and moved it about my face, feeling the weight of the limb, admiring the intense musculature that enabled such a huge mass to move at all. But at this size, it was all so much waste. I lowered my head down to the earth, letting my skull conform a slight raise in the ground under me, feeling fatigued.

All my life I'd struggled to increase my size. I'd always felt it was very important and delighted in the sheer bigness I'd achieved time and time again. Yet now... I looked out across the landscape. Even with my head resting on the ground, my vantage was well above the canopy. Everything looked flat. And that was the problem wasn't it. I was like a sheep trying to live off the barest nubs of grass that grew at its hooves and yet worse because I had to eat each blade of grass individually. What was the point of grazing when there was hardly anything at all worth grazing for?

This I considered for a long time, breathing slowly as the night came and then passed, the sun like a jolly lantern over my head. Then a thought struck me. Perhaps the solution is to avoid grazing altogether.

Once I'd resolved the issue in my mind, it was not at all difficult to think of a solution, though the implications did bear some consideration. If I were to keep on growing and not waste massive amounts of energy, I'd have to resign myself to a life of almost complete sedentariness. Such a huge bulk could not hope to be moved even a little without equally huge expenditure. To survive on the food available, I'd have to resolve to move thus as little as possible. However the prospect seemed bleak and uninteresting.

Only in the deep waters of the ocean would I be able to find any liberty at all and I could not always be in the ocean. Not if I wanted to be efficient. Oh the prospect seemed such a bother.

I sat quietly for a while longer. Absently fiddling with the design of such a body as I might need under such circumstances, but without much enthusiasm. The more I imagined my future, counting every swish of my tail as expenditure of increasingly dear resources, the more despondent I felt. "Better it seems," I thought to myself rationally, "to be small and many, even smaller than I am right now for the purpose of eating when nothing that can be eaten grows anywhere near my proportions." I thought the words to myself again, nodding my head, but I could really feel them. Inside, the desire for bigness, for an even larger scope of body burned brightly, defying all rationalization.

I swallowed and licked my lips, now trying to imagine myself smaller, perhaps one among a number of more appropriately sized daughters. I ground my teeth, disliking the image. How unsatisfying, almost like giving up on potential greatness and worse it would not even work. Even if I were pregnant all the year round, I could not support a growing population of daughters alone. I would be disadvantaged much more than base mortal creatures, being a sole reproducing entity to carry such a species. I would never be able to devour the life of the lands, drink in the oceans or touch my nose to the sky.

I snorted a huge breath and with force of will quickened myself with my final design for my new body, a huge pale skinned snake.

In addition to the snake, however, I also quickened a scale of carrier daughters from quite small to large. I had a very large body to get rid of after the birth and I would need many mouths to devour it. I kept the snake buried inside as I passed through faster maturing carriers. These were not the same sort of long lived carrier I'd made in the past, as I was playing fast and dirty just now, but they only needed a little time anyways. Carriers would form the only staple my new snake body would need and she/me would devour them whole with no blood spilled and no waste.

The snake was an easy body plan. Easier to grow for sure than the four legged dragon body I sported now. Easier to store fat or spend it as well. But although the body plan was easier, inside of her I matured complex organs such as I did not possess now and an adaptable physiology so that I might more easily break down and grow new features of my innards as needed in times to come. Also inside was a heavily developed uterus, many folded and containing segments and horns for daughters of different sizes, development times and stages of development. I would be able to manufacture all the daughters I liked and I would have to since I was intent on leading a largely stationary life from now on in pursuit of bigness.

A dozen carriers lined up besides me. No, far too few. Two dozen, all different sizes. Still too few. I kept heaving out carriers whilst inside my snake daughter was nearing completion. In fact rather I hoarded her inside towards the end. To benefit myself I'd given her a very large brain. I was fearful of her developing a contrary personality once she emerged. Of course, that was already happening inside of the womb.

"Mother, am I not complete yet?" she asked, squirming and making my insides tickle. "I should like to see the outside world now and it is very cramped."

"Soon enough." I urged her in passing yet another new carrier. So far I'd done my best in shielding her from outside influences, yet also attempted to sate her growing mind with knowledge from my own. It might not have mattered very much if she became a rebellious daughter, at least in terms of being physically threatened. But if she decided to refuse to eat of me, especially at a key moment, deciding not to share the fate of the previous occupant of this body, that could very well prove disastrous.

"But I am sure I am ready now." she said again, squirming harder. I coughed from the sensation and then looked at my assembled carriers, their jaws waiting to tear into me at my command. Five dozen. Would that be enough? I'd slimmed a lot more and yet I remained vast for such tiny carriers.

Realizing my pitiful rate of birthing daughters, I'd recalled my erstwhile carrier from southern lands. She was approaching full growth now, though she was quite slender or so she reported. Her foragers had all died and she needed to find her own food. The economic problem that I'd discovered and was trying to rectify now was only exasperated given her yet larger size. Though I'd called for her some months ago she remained at least a week's travel distant.

"Be patient. Let's wait for your big sister to come back to us. I'd like to be sure that nothing is wasted of my old body should it prove too much for all the new carriers." I cooed softly in thought.

But less than a day later came more stomach turning bending and squirming. "I want out now!" She said testily now. "I am full grown and oughtn't be in here any more."

"Daughter, you are no where near your full growth," I said trying to placate, but she knew I was bluffing.

"Of course not. But I am not skinless either. You cannot hope to keep growing me inside. Shortly I will be too large to even exit. What are you waiting for? Why do you insist that I remain inside?" Her tone had gone from testy to calculating towards the end.

I licked my chops uncertainly. Perhaps I was being too cautious. Less than a week more and I should be safe. My traitor daughter had been on the outside for many years before she'd formed her contrary thoughts. Surely the same could not happen here in so short a time. I was surely escalating what little danger there was, if there was any. And yet, I had to remember the words my daughter had flung at me so violently. "It is death!" she'd told me and claimed that I saved nothing but the pieces of one's spirit. As well separate a cat into head, legs and torso and throw them into a sack and call it saved. Pieces meaningless without the whole. Could there be any truth to that at all?

Before I could ponder on the subject more, another spasm lurched through my lower midsection and I relented. "Ugh, you may come out daughter, if only you will stop slapping me so..."

And so the grey, leather skinned serpent spilled out all in a great burst. She was already very large by terrestrial standards and would have been easily able to constrict and devour a bull elephant whole without effort. Before she was even dry she was lifting her head, tasting the air with a black forked tongue. "How queer..." she remarked and began to slither off, umbilical chord dragging along beside her length.

There was no controlling her after that. She wandered as she pleased through the clearing where I was making my current residence and among the trees that grew scattered at a distance, the forest having been eaten at by carriers in the time since their own conceptions. She was a very curious sort, looking at rocks and trees and the sky though I'd described such things to her at length while she lay in the womb. But happily I let her occupy herself. My big carrier was near at hand now. There shouldn't be any time for her to form contrary thoughts.

And indeed the days did not seem long enough for the grey snake. It was not long at all before I could see the shape of my large carrier walking at a distance on the horizon. Only her back was showing just now, but that was close enough. She would only be eating of me if no body else could finish.

The grey snake watched with curiosity as I laid my dragon body down for the last time. "Are you not afraid that it will hurt mother?" she asked.

"It is going to hurt, but I am not afraid. You shall be taking my place. You are a much better body than this one." I said, beckoning to the carriers and their sharp teeth.

The snake worked her jaws, dislocating and then closing them again. "I do not think I am nearly so large to eat you, mother. Not the way I am supposed to."

"It only needs to be this one time, after this, you shall be eating carriers whole. Just bite down on whatever you can grab in your mouth and work your teeth. I will be able to find you, so long as your flesh and mine is connected." I said to her and then the carriers began their gruesome task.

The initial pain filled me and I could not stifle loud bellows of pain as they began to open the midsection. It took all my concentration to keep from jerking a leg and killing one or several of the much smaller carriers. Slowly the grey snake slithered up to my side where the blood was already oozing out in gallons. At a flap of torn skin she opened her mouth and clamped on uncertainly. Her tiny teeth, made for grasping not shearing grated, almost uselessly against it.

"Mother, I am trying, but I do not think I can do it."

Mentally, I rolled my eyes because physically they were shut tightly. None of the other carriers required encouragement or instruction in this matter. "Move inside, where the flesh is softer."

"Like this?" she asked now biting again.

"Ugh..." I groaned, "Yes, like that." It might have been comical were not my body going though the process of dying. But despite the preoccupation, I kept my concentration on my little uncertain grey snake. For her to stop now... I didn't want to think about the prospect of winding up in a wrong body, only to suffer through this process again for no reason and allowing more time to pass in which my snake could form dangerous thoughts.

A long time passed and the time for my carriers to lie down and rest for a time inevitably came as I knew it would. I would have to lay open and exposed, not injured enough to die until the second round of feeding commenced. Before the end, one of the larger carriers was thoughtful enough to tear off a large piece of fatty tissue my snake daughter had been attached to from the first and unable to swallow. Now that it was broken off, she was at last able to get down the large hunk. Fortunately it was more than large enough to sate her appetite for now and she went directly to sleep. For me there was no sleep, not with the blood drying across my opened belly and chest, my legs already partially gnawed on as well.

But my snake woke early the next day, staring up at the huge grisly mass of me. "It is terrible that you should have to go through this, just so that you may have my body." My daughter said to me.

"If there was another way..." I thought back somewhat wistfully.

"If I could, I'd take you in at once mother. And then we'd be happy." She said with true compassion.

I simply sent her a nod of approval, hoping that the many carriers would soon digest me and get back to work. Hopefully this would not take another day.

After a time, a while after the smaller carriers had already gotten to work tearing at me with their teeth, the snake added, "I think we shall be so happy, once you're in here with me. I'm looking forward to getting even bigger than you are now. Just like you showed me."

Oh dear. I realized her train of thought and the huge omission from what was soon about to happen. She thought that her mind was to somehow survive the process of change. How she came to this conclusion I don't know. Surely she did not think that we were to share a body? Or maybe she did not fully reason out the situation yet. I coughed, feigning a spasm of pain. "Yes, just so." I said vaguely.

She cocked her head, but said nothing, but her concern for me reached out from her quizzical mind. Not now, I thought vigorously. Just a few hours more and it will no longer matter. To her I said, "If you are not too full, I think you should start eating again. I do not wish to remain in this body much longer. The pain is very great."

"Of course." she said diligently and slide on her belly towards me over a great pool of blackened blood.

However, as I felt her tiny teeth dig into a soft portion of my abdomen, the words of my traitor daughter kept coming back to me. "It is death." she kept saying to me, the words like flies about my head.

But what could that possibly mean in any case. My snake daughter's mind is not more lost in this case than it would be if I'd simply eaten her. If anything this would be a softer, gentler form of dispersion. More a displacement than anything else with no damage to the brain at all. Brains and nerves again... What were the impulses sent by nerve bundles after all? Even if the accumulation resulted in the phenomenon known as "mind." It was not at all the same as the living essence within the body, something that went far deeper and was more essential to life even than the brain. Could not a beast lose most of its brain and yet still function, even with out a mind. That went to prove that it was not so important, not worth saving like essences were.

But of my mind? Well, that was different of course. And not all my mind was even contained in the mere fabric of my brain. I was also the golden net inside of me composed of countless essences. This was proven fact now because if that weren't the case I could never have survived the transition to this body in the first place. I was inherently different from mortal creatures, including daughters. The same ethics could not apply.

But yet this uneasiness still trickled up my spine. Even when I was taken with a convulsion as my abdominal sack was opened and my organs began to be feasted upon, the blood loss now escalating and weakness settling all over my body. Surely there was nothing to be done at this point. I had to become the snake now and really there was no other option. I'd thought that through already. To baulk at the final moment, other something as trivial as the mind of a daughter...

But of course it wasn't just that, it never was.

Blood began to flow heavily from my mouth and I burbled a great sigh as I felt the collapse of my body coming on like a rush of great wind and cold. It was time. I retreated to the web, pulling back from the dying body. Where was my snake daughter? There, the uncertain biting was easily apparent. With the loosened net starting to give way, I pulled it by force of will in that direction.

With my snake daughter busy swallowing a huge hunk of my flesh, nursing down the blood dribbling from it, I/we found a suitable bridge. The net began to flow into her tiny body. Slowly at first but with building momentum like a flood everything passed into her, spilling out inside of her from the gut and spreading outward. The net was anxious to unfold itself into new living flesh.

Up the spine I went and the muscles tightened and then relaxed yielding control. I had sensation again. Recklessly I sped upward, towards where I needed to connect the most.

My daughter sensed me. "Mother! You have come." she said, joyously, not a trace of fear in her mind as like the last time.

I hesitated, almost guilty. "Yes. I have come. You have done very well. You should be happy."

I crept up further, all the cells of her serpent's body yielding to my touch. Shortly my daughter's breath came a bit faster. "Is this quite normal? I cannot feel much anymore and now I cannot see."

"Quite normal." I said, but felt a sick taste linger on a tongue I did not yet have. "Just be quiet a moment and everything shall be as it is supposed to."

Just a few moments more, then my daughter spoke again, thoughts more frantic. Her brain was an island in a body no longer attached to what she would have called her own mind. "I... I... I am not to live with you, am I? This blackness yawning..."

I closed my eyes and I felt them on my face now. "Just a moment dear. It will be over soon."

Almost, almost done. From my daughter's mind came a spasm, like the kicks from a dying corpse and then it began to fade away into the ether in earnest. Like a sigh my daughter's last thought came to me. "I am glad for you, mother."

Then she was gone. I drew a deep breath, my mouth locked around a huge mass of meat that dislocated my jaw. That was it. The whole nasty affair was done with. Inside, I prayed that I did not need to go through it again.

The carriers did work on the corpse with gusto, but despite their numbers, they were all very small compared to the old body. By necessity they needed to be of a size that I could eat now as a 'small' snake. However, just as it seemed that waste would set in at dizzying levels, my huge carrier arrived panting from the last leg of the journey. She was even larger than my old body despite its bulk. If they had been standing next to each other, she would have risen chest and neck over the withers of the smaller. An enormous towering dragon with paws that cracked the earth under her. What ever had I been thinking when I'd conceived her?

Despite the dizzying height, she had been generous in evaluating her condition. She was not just thin, she was gaunt. Obviously having to forage for herself was a net negative in her body's economy. I lay to the side, distended belly full of a glob of flesh torn by another from the carcass and feeling more like a grey sock stretched around a huge side of meat than anything else. The carrier came right up and did not bother to say anything to anyone. Smaller carriers had to move aside for her enormous feet or else be crushed so heedless was she in reaching the body. This huge beast feasted on what used to be my body, pulling great bleeding heaps away that would have out massed my entire snake's body in huge bites. The poor daughter was starving, that much was evident. I should have never made her like that, in such ridiculous proportions, I realized now.

But the carrier did save a great deal of waste by devouring the carcass to the bones before the least hint of corruption began to set in. Thus sated, she collapsed in a heap and went right to sleep. Still she'd said not a word to anyone. Of course, now it was up to me to ensure she was now eaten without waste in turn.

From the first day I took control, I began to breed and found my designer organs more than willing to respond. I grew out harvesters and hunters, body servants and yet more carriers besides so that my lower sections were always quite round and bloated, even when my gut was empty. For convenience's sake and so that I would not be constantly dribbling out daughters, I began to package them in groups contained within soft eggs. Thus fluid waste could be avoided and the trauma each new daughter experienced reduced as well. Carriers still had to be passed whole without eggs one at a time, but when I was bigger I knew I would enfold them thus also.

Finally, with the hassle of changing bodies over, I resumed the march, now heading north west into the dense forests. I grew rapidly, spreading my jaws and swallowing a carrier once or twice a week. Though they were much thicker still than my narrow elongated torso, I enjoyed the tight feeling of my skin stretching to accommodate their bulk inside of me. This was much more satisfying ever than plucking out trees one by one had ever been. Let the daughters do that work from now on and I shall feed on the fruits of their labors.

I was at the center now of a vast posse of migrating daughters. I kept producing carriers of middling size of the type which I could just barely swallow and larger, to hedge against future need. My leviathan carrier tagged along also, happy to move at a slower pace but always complaining of hunger. I did calculations in my head, and found them easier than in the past. My brain was larger now and better designed. Ever I counted the number of carriers and estimated the mass of my behemoth daughter which did dwindle over time despite the comparative plenty surrounding us.

Two-hundred and fourty-five. That was the number needed of daughters ranging from middling to large which I'd have to wait a year or more before I was large enough to swallow them. The very day I had that number I bid my big carrier lay down to be devoured. She did so readily and without complaint. I think she knew it was long in coming. She thought only one thing at me while it happened. "I hope you will be happier now mother." Then she was also gone and I was left with an extensive entourage and a smallish snake where once I'd been two gargantuan dragons. Strangely the coming of this new age of efficiency did not satisfy as I'd expected. But when I bid a nice fat carrier dragonelle to kneel down before me and slowly slid my mouth around her, pulling her distended torso into my mouth and swallowing over the course of hours, I did feel better.