#mergini

[best-bird-tournament]

Sea duck (Mergini) tribe

Which is the best bird?

Long-tailed duck

Harlequin duck

Steller's eider

King eider

Surf scoter

Barrow's goldeneye

Smew

Hooded merganser

Scaly-sided merganser

Voting ended onSep 4, 2025

[saritawolf]

Bufflehead (female or immature male) (Bucephala albeola) - (c) SaritaWolf - please do not repost

[animalids]

Common goldeneye (Bucephala clangula)

Photo by Marlin Harms

[saritawolf]

Scaly-sided Merganser (male) (Mergus squamatus) - (c) SaritaWolf - please do not repost

[saritawolf]

Hooded Merganser (eclipse female) (Lophodytes cucullatus) - (c) SaritaWolf - please do not repost

[wynnefic]

Hear me out: Merope/Nagini.

As time passes, Nagini's curse worsens no matter how much she searches for a cure. The Circus Arcanus has no need of a giant snake who only returns to human form for a few minutes a day, but it's still a shock to be called into the ringmaster's office and be told to leave. There is nowhere for her to go and they both know it, but she's losing the circus money. Her cage would be put to better use by someone who's truly interesting, not a giant snake that children like to poke at and stick their little arms into. Nagini has some funds, but she can't use them as a snake. She can't communicate with anyone that way. She begs the ringmaster for some kind of assistance, but her curse leaves her scaled in the middle of a sentence.

She flees, not wanting to chance her boss using force to remove her from the circus. They're somewhere in Britain, but where, Nagini has no idea. All she knows is that she has to find a forest to hide inside. Months pass. It is a cold, hard, lonely life, but Nagini survives. She stays away from human civilization, not wanting to become anyone's pet or to be killed out of fear, but in the forest there is nothing but boredom. Other snakes are dull, concerned only with their next meal and a dry nest. Nagini is so lonely it hurts, so starved even though her stomach is full. She hadn't had many friends at the circus, but at least she'd had Credence. Now, there is no one.

When she can, she watches humans. She hides herself well, sometimes underground, sometimes up high in a tree, and listens to conversations and watches interactions. It scares her, the ease with which she could lose herself.

Eventually, she stumbles upon a small cottage in the woods. It's held together by clay and magic, obviously inexperienced wandwork, but it stands through storm and wind. In the cottage lives a young woman and her even younger son. Tom, the boy is called, but the woman never refers to herself by any name. She has no visitors. She grows vegetables and herbs in a garden, and sells or trades them for other foods and necessities. She's very quiet, this woman, but sometimes she sings.

One day, when the woman is in the back garden, Nagini rises up, resting her head on a windowsill and looking inside. There's one room inside, with simple furniture and a child asleep in a cot by the window. He is within eating distance, a part of her registers, and would be much more filling than a mouse, but Nagini won't allow herself to be a beast. She is a human, a woman. She'd never intended to have children, not wanting to pass the maledictus curse onto any daughters or granddaughters, but forbidden fruit is always sweeter. She would've liked to have a child. Softly, Nagini sings to him. It's a circus song, inappropriate for a child so young, but he won't understand her anyway. 

Distracted, Nagini doesn't notice the way Merope returns, but she hears her call of, "Wait!"

And that's how they meet, woman and snake-woman. Trust builds slowly between the two of them. They've been hurt before, and Nagini's size isn't comforting, but Nagini returns again and again to the only person who can understand her. One day Tom will be able to speak too instead of hissing unintelligible sounds but for now it is only the two of them. Love crashes into Nagini like a wave. She's always been the type to fall hard and fast. But for Merope, the feeling builds slowly, drifting to and from her awareness until she can deny it no longer. She'd barely survived love the first time around, only clinging to life to care for her son, and a second time could ruin her. But Nagini isn't Tom, pitiful and potioned. She's lovely, strong, willful.

 “I wish you were human,” Merope says one day, so tired of this love that cannot be.

And before her eyes, Nagini returns to her previous form. It’s not a fairy tale, it’s only that a parselmouth can control the maledictus curse because of their affinity with snakes, but Merope feels like she’s stepped into a fairy tale anyway.

It has to be, when Nagini tells her she loves her too.