It's More Than Nature

I think my head will hurt for a while. Party may be small, but he's crazy strong, AND he jacked up my hair.

Sighing, I stood up from my seat by the oor and went outside, seeking adventure. It had been a quiet few days. Just avoid the snakes, I reminded myself, grabbing my neon orange and purple jacket from the back of my chair and stepping into the hot, dry grassland of the Sonoran.

After walking for about five minutes I began to realize... where was my... CRAP.

I'd forgotten something extremely vital.

My belt.

I cursed and started back, arms and face already starting to feel oddly numb. Still mumbling at myself under my breath, I almost tripped over a rock. The rock hissed at me and I froze up, skin tingling from both fallout and fear.

A five-foot brownish-tan shape in the rocks caught my eye, rearing up and stretching its jaws wide. I'm sure if my eyes could have gotten any wider they would, but at this rate they would have also popped out of my head.

The cobra stared me down, daring me to step closer and threaten it again. I backed up a step with each one of its slow advances. Then, hissing mightily, it disappeared. For a split second, I thought it had gone back under its rock, but nooo. Its two-inch fangs, laced thickly with Dylakane, decided to sink into my shin. I jumped back, pain coursing through my leg with the blood.

The snake gave me a look that clearly said You asked for it and slithered under a rock to calm itself down.

My head spun. I could feel the hallucinogen throbbing through me, from the bottom of my calf all the way to the tips of my fingers.

What... somebody told me they got bit in the hand by one, reaching down for a lost bandanna, and were in the haze for like three weeks.That meant I'd probably be in it for almost a month or more. Even the thought made me lightheaded.

I sank to the ground, not feeling the strange sensation on my head or in my lower back, but I certainly would later.

The world spun around me, and a fuzzy imitation of Scatt fizzed into existence by my head. She glanced down at me, eyes narrowed in contempt. "You were always a crappy brother," noted the Killjoy, examining her nails. "Maybe this time we won't have to lose someone to find you. Maybe you'll die." She smirked.

I knew it was just the first effects of the snake bite, but her words still stung. I WAS a crappy brother. I'd been captured, run away, been adopted, run away again, and now bit by a cobra in the desert with nobody to save me.

Maybe she was right.

I lay back against the rocks, trying to get away from the macabre imitation of my sister, but she just frowned at me and stood right in front of me.

By now, I couldn't feel my hands. I managed to look down to se that both were... was that fur?

This couldn't be part of the mirage.

Mirages don't make your hands furry. They make you see things, but... this I could feel too.

Alarmed, I tried to raise myself up on my elbows to sit, but I collapsed back against the rocks. Scatt watched me patiently, and we waited for my death in the wilds of the Sonoran.