Winter falls and we fear it. The cold drives us out of solitude and we seek one another, kindred spirits all, feeble and vulnerable alone, safe and warm together. We leave the grass, quickly before the frost hardens us and before the chill kills us, and take for the safe havens, all of us, all together, all of us frightened and cold and lonely, so incredibly lonely, but alone no longer. We go in droves, slithering hard ground, gripping dirt with our bellies, seeking the safety of closed spaces, finding solace in the shadows, and for that we are the strange, hideous creatures of evil.
We curl into one another tightly, coil together, knot together until we are indistinguishably cords of same scales, same tissues, slim stripes and bands, a roiling, writhing mass of lonesome creatures who seek solidarity in adversity. We will sleep through the cold, altogether, one organism, one family, timid beings that shall vanish from the world until the air is warm again, when we will go our separate ways, and each in our season return again and again.
We fall into the pattern of our forefathers and their forefathers, and shall remain so for years and years more, for all eternity. Centuries later we will still fear the winter, and we will hide away until spring, participating in a collective sleep, sharing the same dream of the warm sun on our backs, warm soil beneath our bodies. So we comfort ourselves in that communal dream, in our shared bodies, underneath the earth, inside the trees, enclave of comfort and happiness in a cold world.
But hark! An outsider arrives and uncovers us, his yowls of terror and the sudden intrusion of the cold air and the frost summoning us out of peaceful slumber. As is in our nature, we move and twist, slithering over and under one another in our tangles, and we are frightening and terrible in our fright and terror, we horrify when we ourselves are horrified, and our very image evokes hatred and the outsider leaves us, only to return to remove us, object of his fear, and return tranquility to his own mind. He purges us with fire and we scream as one, slithering faster and faster, tightening our knots and binding us all down to inevitable death. The cold is no longer our enemy and we perish in flames, altogether we die, and when he leaves, we will be no more, all of us gone.
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