Eerie fic: Cheese, chapter 3: Dragon(s) of the Black Pool

[froodle]

Beatrice the Cockatrice stood on the lip of the Rift, gently blowing super-heated puffs of steam over a barrel-sized cup of drinking chocolate clutched in her two front paws. Her vast, lambent eyes surveyed the world on the other side of the Rift, and she breathed deep, filling her lungs with the exotic, exciting smells of soy sauce and peanut oil, fried rice, and in the distance, overlaying it all, the enticing scent of fields of golden corn, ripening under an alien sun.

Today, however, something else came to her on the breeze. A metallic taste against the roof of her mouth, one that brought back memories that were hundreds of years old, when she had hidden in dark chasms and leapt out at unsuspecting human travellers, who had screamed and struggled and filled the air with the stink of their mortal dread.

Beatrice turned at a thick churning sound behind her, heavy scaled coils being dragged through fertile loam, and a low sussuration of a million tiny snakes hissing and writhing against each other.

"Good morning, Beatrice," said Echidna, slithering up and pooling her enormous length into a neat pile of looping flesh, the better to raise herself snout-to-beak with her fellow legend. "How does the dawn find you?"

"With rosy-tipped fingers stroking golden warmth on my skin," Beatrice gave the traditional response to the traditional greeting. "Hot chocolate?"

"Thank you, no," replied Echidna, smoothing her mane of snakes with her barbed tail. "Have you seen my daughter about?"

The Mother of Monsters had at least two dozen female offspring that Beatrice knew of, and probably more besides, but there was no doubt as to which one she meant.

"She went through the Rift before the human sun came up," said Beatrice. "I didn't see her come back."

Echidna sighed, and her snakey tresses hissed along with it, coiling and knotting around each other. The motion made Beatrice feel a little seasick, and she focused on Echnida's blunt serpentine nose instead. Of course, accidental eye-contact would hardly result in them turning each other to stone, but it wasn't considered polite among their people.

"Off to play with her little human friends again, no doubt," she said wearily. "I tell you, Beatrice, I could wish my people followed the Dragon Path sometimes. Snake Path is so hard on our young girls."

"I've often thought it would be fun to take a human aspect," said Beatrice. "They seem to lead such busy, exciting lives; always moving, always going somewhere..."

Echidna snorted. "They run around like chickens with the heads cut off, you mean," she said, then froze. "Beatrice, forgive me, that was horribly rude..."

Beatrice waved the apology away. "I know it's a figure of human speech," she said. "No offense taken, pay it no mind."

Echidna swayed from side to side in embarrassment. "I certainly didn't mean to imply... you know that I have the utmost respect for your people..." she stuttered.

"Really, it's fine," said Beatrice. "You were telling me about Lamia's progress along Snake Path?"

Echidna visibly wilted with relief at the opportunity to change the subject.

"I know it's our tradition," she said. "But I can't help thinking it does more harm than good. Here is my wonderful snake-girl, all white and silver and so strong and quick, Beatrice, she can already wrestle young Cereberus into submission half the time, and you know what a brute he is... anyway, and then I tell her, "Darling, you must squeeze eighty feet of serpentine pride into the body of a human girl, and go out and beguile young men with your feminine wiles so you can eat them up" and... well, sometimes I think it does more harm than good. A snake should be a snake, Beatrice. Adhering to human beauty standards is just going to cause problems in the long run."

"Oh, but she is very beautiful," said Beatrice. "I'm sure all the human boys are very impressed with her."

"I know," said Echidna. "But I just want more for her. Our family is over three thousand years old; why shouldn't she simply rampage and trample over the human cities like her brothers? Besides, I hate the idea of her out there in that blonde monkey-skin of hers, so small and vulnerable. What if she gets into trouble and can't shed it fast enough?"

"What does her father say?" Beatrice wanted to know.

Echidna made a small noise of irritation in the back of all her throats. "You know Typhon; tradition this and tradition that." She sighed. "I love him, of course, and he simply dotes on Lamia; he wants the world for her, but he wants it the way it was when we were young monsters ourselves; golden hair, white breasts, a siren song and a cave littered with the bones of foolish lustful young men. He doesn't see how he risks stifling her creativity with his tales of the glorious olden days."

Beatrice made a vague sound of acknowledgement. Like all Cockatrice, she had only a father, no mother, and would never have children of her own, though if she had, she would have liked a daughter like Lamia.

Of course, Lamia was shy and a little awkward, in her true skin or her human one, and Beatrice thought that if she ever rampaged across the human world with the rest of her many-headed siblings, she would forever be apologising to the little hairless apes crushed to paste beneath her pale coils. Nevertheless, there was a burning curiousity in her pink, hooded eyes that held your attention; a drive to explore, to discover, and the intelligence to use whatever she had found.

"I think," she said carefully, aware she may even now be overstepping, "I think the two of you raised a smart girl, and one who'll make her own decisions about what she'll want her life to look like."

Echidna shook herself, laughing a little and shaking her enormous scaled head. "I'm being silly," she said. "You're right, of course. I don't know why I feel so anxious today."

"There is something strange in the human world this morning," Beatrice offered. "It tastes a little like when I used to hunt in Albion, centuries ago."

"Really?" asked Echidna, turning pale with alarm. "Do you think there could be some sort of predator out there?"

"I don't know," said Beatrice. "It's been so long since anything challenged us here, I can't say for sure that I didn't just imagine it."

"Help put up the child safety gate anyway," said Echidna decisively. "Just in case. If there's something out there, I don't want the little ones sneaking out unaccompanied."

The "safety gate" was an enormous black door forged of cold iron and the blood of ancient monster-slayers, and a lock made from the shattered skull of Hercules himself. It stank of terror and immortal lives ended by violence, and it singed the tender pink pads of Beatrice's paws when she hefted her end. She gritted her beak and tried to hold it with her claws as they braced it across the lower half of the Rift, and fastened it in place by anchoring the bones of Bellerophon to the rocky walls on either side of the gap.

"If you see Lamia, will you tell her to come straight home?" asked Echidna, when the unpleasant task was done. "She should be back soon in any case - I asked her to babysit while I drive Orthrus to a job interview - but I think I'll stay home with the little ones instead." She glanced apprehensively at the still-shimmering light of the Rift, now somewhat muted but never able to be entirely sealed.

"Of course," said Beatrice.