The consciousness was slowly returning. His brain started making sense of the overwhelming stimuli. The hearing returned first. First it was a noise. Then he recognized voices. ‘Were they arguing?’ But he did not understand any word just yet.

  The sounds started becoming more clear at about the same time as he started seeing colors. He could swear someone said his name. ‘Did someone call me?’ he thought. ‘What is my name?’ He could not remember. In fact, he remembered nothing. He heard someone say his name again. ‘Solomon!’ He knew it was his name.

  It became quiet. Slowly the other senses returned. He could hear birds chirping, he could feel a light breeze on his skin and he could feel his body, and he could feel he was lying on the ground. He could also see, but he could not understand where he was.

  He raised his head and looked around. He realized he was somewhat short-sighted. He could not see far into the distance, making it impossible to know where he was.

  Not only did he not know where he was and where to go, he also did not know who, or what, he was.

  He looked behind. He saw his long body, covered in dark greenish scales, except for the underside, which was beige. He was a snake!

  The good news, he now knew what he was. The bad news, he did not know how to be a snake. ‘Snakes hunt. Snakes eat. Snakes sleep. But what else do snakes do? I should probably start with finding something to eat.’

  Solomon moved forward. The pce looked a bit like a forest at first. He saw tall, green pnts all around him. The ground was made of dirt and some pnt matter. After slithering for a bit he found a leaf. A huge leaf blocking his path between two tall green pnts. ‘A leaf from a tree. And it’s rger than I am. That means I am really small! And those green pnts must be grass.’ He was slightly terrified by the realization of his size. And he knew it was not his normal size, because he knew leaves should be small and grass should be small as well.

  He slithered around the leaf and continued moving. Then he stopped as he saw something moving. Something was moving the earth in front of him. It was coming from underground, breaking the surface to get out. ‘An earthworm!’

  The earthworm crawled out from its hole and ignoring Solomon squirmed away. ‘It’s so huge! Solomon thought. ‘It must be twice my size! I’m lucky they don’t eat snakes. They don’t eat snakes, right?’

  Solomon continued forward. After a while he spotted an ant. ‘This looks meal-sized!’ He followed the ant. But when he got closer he noticed the ant’s mandibles. ‘No, thank you. Unless I can somehow kill the ant it could seriously wound me.’ So Solomon changed course and looked for something else to eat.

  Not far away from there he found a round metal object. ‘A coin! It could buy me enough food for months at my size.’ Of course, there was no way for him to carry this coin. He wrapped himself around its circumference. He was only long enough that he could just touch his tail with his nose!

  It was only ter, after slithering for a few hours, that he actually found something to eat. He saw a pnt which he could not recognize, but knew it wasn’t grass. He saw a beetle up on its leaf. As he was getting hungry, he decided to not be picky. He climbed up the stalk and onto the leaf.

  Slowly he slid towards the beetle. It was rge, about twice the size of an ant, but did not look dangerous. It was much rger than Solomon’s head, but he recalled that snakes are able to open their jaws really wide. So he tried to do just that. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and he thought that he could swallow the beetle. He got closer until he was just behind it, and snap! The rear half of the beetle was in his mouth. Not for long though, the beetle reacted and jumped away. ‘Oh, bother. I should hold it with more force next time.’

  He was about to slide down the pnt and back onto the ground, when he noticed something yellow on the underside of the leaf. ‘Eggs!’ Fifty yellow eggs, each one of them a bit over a millimeter long. He proceeded to have his first ever meal as a snake. It was quite filling! Small, but numerous, they quenched his feeling of hunger for the time being. He wasn’t full yet however.

  The additional weight in his stomach made him feel heavy. He could not move as fast as before. Nevertheless, he continued his search for food. ‘If I could just find more of these eggs,’ he thought. ‘That would be the easiest way to fill my stomach.’

  Finding these eggs turned out to be much easier than he initially thought. He didn’t see them before because he wasn’t looking up at the undersides of the leaves. Still, because of his short sight he had to get close to the pnt to examine its leaves.

  He climbed on one pnt and ate a bunch of eggs, then some more from another pnt and it was enough to make him feel full. ‘I am going to blow up if I eat even more. I should y down now and let the eggs be digested.’

  He knew he shouldn’t just y anywhere. He looked for a safe pce. He did not want to look far, because he could barely move with a full belly, which had expanded several times in order to contain all the food. So when he saw a rge stone he buried himself in pnt matter at its base consisting of dead bdes of grass, st year’s leaves and tiny pieces of bark, among other things.

  He y there motionless, but conscious of his surroundings. He was almost completely covered, he only left himself an opening in front of his head through which he could observe. He found it very pleasant. He felt like he could stay like this forever, resting with his hunger satisfied. He was happy to find out that the rotting grass exuded a little bit of heat. That became even more important, when the night came. He thought that he would freeze, if not for his shelter. It wasn’t very cold outside, but, as he just remembered, snakes are cold-blooded. They do not produce their own heat and become inactive when cold. ‘I need to find a shelter every night or I will die,’ he thought.

  The night passed and Solomon realized he did not sleep for even a moment. Apparently he did not need sleep, just rest. His belly was still mostly full, so he just y there.

  Another day passed, then another. Every morning Solomon’s belly was smaller, but it still had plenty to digest. It took another few days for it to return to normal size. That is, if you consider an almost empty stomach normal. The snake would rather have a full stomach be the norm.

  Solomon had been resting for about a week by this point. But now it was time to look for more food. The morning came and when he thought it was warm enough, he slithered out from his shelter. He felt somewhat stiff. But as he moved the sun rays reheated his body and he felt normal again.

  The snake was looking for more of these eggs he had before. No need to make life more difficult than it needs to be. After filling his stomach with unborn beetles again, he returned to his shelter. And just as before, he stayed there for a week.

  Not much happened during that week of blissful inactivity. Sometimes he could see an ant going by, sometimes other insects. Sometimes he felt vibrations made by some rge creature walking, but he never saw them. One day he saw a frog, and felt very grateful that it did not see him. He wasn’t sure if frogs eat snakes, but given its size it could rather easily.

  It was the night, when his stomach was almost empty, when he felt something in his mind. He did not understand what it was at first. It felt foreign. It was like a thought, which had not formed yet into a sentence, but not quite his own thought.

  Solomon concentrated on it. He knew it had valuable information. He knew it was important. And he could make sense out of it.

  Not much at first. The strange thought felt like it was forming a new part of his mind. It spoke of power, of growth… But it had no structure to speak of. ‘If I could just make a sentence out of it…’ But it was too complex. ‘Perhaps I should try to visualize it?’ He tried forming a picture in the space of the mind that the thought occupied. He thought that he saw a snake at first, but then, subconsciously, he remembered something he used to do before he became a snake.

  Solomon recalled a vague memory of a happy time with a person he loved. They were pying a game together. He suddenly felt cold, not physically cold, but from the realization of how much he was missing that person.

  It wasn’t the person, however, but the game that his mind needed. He recalled having to create his character. During the game, their attributes, skills and perks were dispyed as numbers. And the foreign thought was happy to adopt this pattern.

  In Solomon’s mind, a vision formed. Or something akin to that. It did not obscure his sight, he could see both the world and the now structured information at the same time. He was just as surprised, as he was eager to learn what it had to say.

  Name: Solomon

  Level: 2

  Length: 53.9 mm

  Weight: 90.8 mg

  Perk points: 1

  Avaible perks:

  Efficiency I

  Digestion I

  Venom I

  Vision I