I awoke to the gentle pat of a hand on the side of my serpentine head. "Hey, I think something is going on." I sighed a hiss as I attempted to turn away from my wake up call. "Oh no you don't. Up, up!" Another slightly more firm pat to my head shook away some of the daze of restfulness. "I thought that I got to sleep on today..." I groaned as I propped myself up on my elbows to face the disruptor of my dozing. A young woman with shoulder length brown-blonde hair sat on the edge of our sleeping rolls. She had sun kissed, freckled skin and deep brown eyes that always brought to mind rich soil, or the dark sweet cocoa confections occasionally enjoyed by the denizens of this town.

"I think I heard calling coming from the courtyard, it sounds like someone might be in trouble. An important someone judging by the number of people it sounds like. Oh quit groaning like an old man and get up! They probably need help, so you are going to get called to the temple anyway." She babbled as she rose and through a pair of cotton trousers into my face. Ashi, the woman who so rudely started my morning for me, had been my wife for close to four years now. She had come to the monastery to request aid for her family, her sister had fallen ill to massive headaches and the clerics could not seem to find a way to cure her.

And as with so many others, she came to us as a last resort. Coming from a humble family of botanists and hedge druids, they had little in the way of payment to the Yuan-ti of the monastery, and like the many of the poor that seek aid from the serpents, she gave payment in the only way she could. She offered herself up for five years of indenturement. In exchange her sister was taken into the bowels of the temple, where a malison and his pureblood assistants set about their grim work. Through careful application of magic and surgical techniques unique to our order her sister was able to walk free of her headaches, and went on to try to raise the wealth to buy her sister's time back from us.

I was a young acolyte then, a pure blood aspirant with a fresh connection to the father. She was set to work tending the gardens, and while she worked amongst the leaf and root, I found myself attracted to her healthy frame and earthly beauty. We courted for two years before I proposed marriage. For a while I had feared she agreed to marry a Yuan-ti so that she would be released from her indenturement early, but my fears had been unfounded. Four years, two children, and an ascendance ritual later, and she still happily hangs around to toss garments at me every morning.

I'd have it no other way.

After hastily donning my breeches and a smock, I went bare footed out into the courtyard to see what all of the commotion was about. I was greeted by a full contingent of elves surrounding what looked to be a worried elf lord standing next to a litter bearing a crying girl. A fellow malison had already emerged to greet the contingent. The elf lord and the malison, Lesesin I think from the pattern of her scales, spoke fast. I made out "Labor" and "Complications" and that was all I needed to hear before I sighed inwardly. This was already starting out to be a difficult day.