Yvie woke up as she lulled back in forth in the cage. A strong smell of salty water reached her tongue, as she remembered where she was and what she was.

In a cage. As a snake.

She looked around, quickly noticing the sun going down, as well as her father carrying her.

'At least it's not mother who carries it…' She found herself thinking, trying to get her brain up to speed with the current situation. The instinct that had kept calling out to her as she fell asleep was stronger than ever. Almost like she was going to burst.

'It's like the snake part of me knows it might die…' Yvie thought with a bitter yank, as she hit her tail against the cage. After the feeling had grown stronger, she could tell it was because of that.

"Be still" Her father shushed at her, shaking the cage a bit extra, as to show her who was boss. Yvie's thick skin made a great cushion, so it didn't hurt, but her emotions didn't have a cushion. Her feelings didn't have something that could help the hurt keep the bruising down.

Just as she was silently cursing her parents, something fell on top of her.

'Another skin?' She thought, as she inspected it. This one was even more white and even more glistening as her last. Did she shed it as she slept? Or was it the one her parent's had found? But why would they bother to open the cage, only to put that one in… That didn't make sense, she thought.

'Did I just deduce something?' Yvie stopped her thoughts to wonder. Something was definitely going on, but she didn't yet feel clever enough to know what. Or even try to find out.

'For now, I need to figure out how to escape' Yvie decided, as she looked around in the small cage. There was just her and her skin. Nothing that could help her. Her father carried her with a distance, so even if she wanted to, she couldn't bite him or reach him otherwise either.

Getting more nervous, as well as the night and the moon settling more into their place, Yvie felt a dizziness that usually meant she didn't have full control. She wasn't sure if she should try letting go of her newly gained thoughts, or if she should try keeping a hold on them.

'Would a real snake be able to escape this kind of thing' She asked herself, as she looked at her shed skin.

'Or would a proper human be able to do it…' She asked herself again.

'Or maybe, it's only a mix that can!' She concluded, feeling slightly better. For someone who had never felt that anything was wrong with her, and that she was fine as she was, despite constant disapproval from her parents, her doubt was easy to brush away in that way. Somehow it didn't feel as right as she had hoped, to conclude this. Yvie still panicked, she still didn't know how to stop it, and she was still trapped in a cage as a snake, that might or might not go fully into snake mode.

Just as she started to worry even more, the cage was thrown down, making sand come up at the buttom.

"We're here" Her father said, though it did not seem like he was talking to Yvie.

"Let's get this done. It better work this time" Yvie's mother said, proceeding to complain about the sand in her shoes.

Yvie looked in horror at the full moon, feeling her animalistic senses slightly taking over and cloud her mind.

'If I can transform into a human…' She thought to herself, trying to keep a train of thought running, as she otherwise felt like everything really would be lost.

'If I can transform…" She tried again, wanting to finish it, but it was hard. She kept being able to think the first few words, but she couldn't get any longer in the process than that.

'If I can…' Her mind started to wander too much to keep track, as her parents started carrying the cage again.

"You there, come here" Yvie's mother ordered a third person at the beach. Someone Yvie hadn't seen before. A rush of anxiety flooded her clouded mind, and she felt able to think again from the sheer shock and horror this third person being here made her feel.

'Mother and father would never willingly let anybody see me in snake form… So what is another person doing here?' Yvie thought, trying hard to figure it out, while at the same time, suppressing the first thought that shot at her. The same feeling she got about how the breaking of the curse could be done.

'Human…. Sacrifice….?' Yvie hesitantly tried bringing the horrible feeling into words, as she looked at the poor man standing close to her mother.

Looking around the cage once again, Yvie wondered if it would break if she transformed back. If it could hold a sudden explosion of mass. Breaking it would be her best option, but looking around at the size, she was scared that turning would instead make her into dead meat. Literally.

Just as Yvie was wondering, a little poke hit her from under her. She noticed a shiny thing at the other end. She then got dropped down in the sand again, after having been hanging in the air as her blood seemingly got collected from under her.

'A knife!' she shrieked in her mind, hissing on the outside. However, her father who was holding the knife didn't seem to give it a second thought.

"We need you to draw with her blood on your forehead, your chest and your stomach" Her father said to the unknown man, almost as if he was reading from something.

"Blood! How unsanitary!" Her mother yelped as she turned around. Yvie looked at the trickle of blood that continued to flow a bit, staining the cage as well as the sand. Something seemed to flip in her. She didn't know much of the world, but she felt like she had learned one thing.

'The curse isn't the real curse… It's how my parent's treat me because of it' She thought to herself, feeling true anger for the first time in her life. The moon light amplified this, as it shone down on her. Her glistening white skin turned and pale yellow, then orange, then red. Her beautiful and staring green eyes flared up, looking like blood. She was boiling over.

Without being able to think, she bit the cage open with her jaw alone, and slithered out, unbeknownst to her parent's and the unknown man, who was still fully immersed with where the blood should be.

Yvie, having lost her senses, went directly for the kill, as she jumped at her mother. Just then, her father noticed the red snake floating over to them. He leaped over to his wife, pushing her out of direct harms way.

"WHATEVER ARE YOU DOING? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?" She yelled, but her complaining stopped as she followed her husband's pointed finger towards the red nightmare that was their daughter.

Yvie, seeing these horrified faces, regained a tinge of control. She noticed the situation, that she was out, what she had almost done, the horror on the unknown man's face that matched the horror on her parents. She took the entire situation in within a second, and felt a deep sense of shame.

'If it's like this, I'm no better than them…' She thought, turning around as fast as she could, directly towards the sea. She swam away, fled, almost floating. Her red skin lost it's color the further she got, turning back into a pure white that could only be compared with the pure light of the moon.

'What now?' Yvie asked herself as she tried desperately to hold on to that tiny bit of reason that had kept her from becoming a monster.