Location: Myrefall, Thalra’s building Time: Very early morning Status: @efraincrayhorn
Sometime in the early hours of the day, Thalra felt a trembling that shook her bed and made the paintings affixed to her bedroom walls on the third-floor rattle. But as Thalra was still half-drunk and sleepy from the evening before she’d enjoyed with Efrain and her brother, and because the shaking stopped rather quickly and seemed to have no other consequence except for a strange prickling feeling on her skin, she merely turned over in her sheets and receded her mind back into her trance. Except, as she went to do so, her mind fell into a slumber that was unlike what most elves experienced. She began to sleep, and as she did, her skin changed color from obsidian to a dark earthy green. Her hair thickened and pulsed and came alive, until slumbering white snakes curled in and around her pillow. Thalra’s eyes, which had once been pupil-less and pastel lilac in color, turned white, with yellow pupils forming behind her closed lids.
When she finally awoke, and stretched out in her bed, for a moment, she noticed nothing. Then her skin caught on the sheets, and Thalra noticed that she felt as if her bed had grown just slightly smaller, or- no, that she had grown a few precious inches in the night. Thalra’s eyes snapped open and the light filtering in from her window looked different, as if the way her eyes processed light had changed. She raised her arm up and saw green, and patches of scales.
And Thalra screamed.
This, of course, woke the snakes up, who began to hiss sleepily in annoyance. Thalra felt them slither by her neck and shrieked again, leaping from her bed and clutching her own head only to find her hands filled with thick scaled bodies, twisting around her wrists and arms. She rolled out of bed and onto her feet, clawing at her own head as hissing filled her ears almost louder than her own screams. Her back hit her dresser as she continued screaming, her mind racing. But as she looked around, her eyes fell on her bureau and she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The scream choked off in her throat as she stared for a long moment, taking herself in. Her skin had changed hue, still dark, but now with a substantial green tint. Snakes sprouted from her scalp, and wound their way around her fingers as they explored her arms. And as she looked, her mouth gaping open in horror, she saw that her tongue was split down the middle, forked, and thinner than it had been.
Lurching to the side and away from her reflection, Thalra threw her bedroom door open and raced down the two flights of stairs to the first floor where Nil’s room was and where Efrain had been staying in the guest bedroom the night before. “Nil!” she shouted, throwing open his door and finding the bedroom empty. Her heart, which had been pounding in her chest, skipped a beat as a sense of dread filled her. But she couldn’t stand there frozen, so she turned and went down the hall.
She threw open the door to the room that she’s put Efrain in for the night, hoping that he would have some idea of what to do, or any explanation of what was going on.