Sandruhoe .

Age: 38 years old

Race: half human - half snake

Physical Description: Sandruhoe has a human head and upper body. The creature's lower body is that of a large snake. The human part is of normal human size, but the snake part because it fits the human body is very large, though not so terribly long. Sandruhoe's sex is indeterminate, but from childhood she has been treated as a girl. Her human face is quite beautiful with tan skin, golden eyes though the pupils are not round as in human eyes. Her hair is also sleek and golden and about shoulder length. Besides the slit-like pupils, Sandruhoe also has small extra folds on each side of the back of her neck which are hidden by her hair. These are the sacks where her poison is stored.

Possessions: Sandruhoe has shared a household with her mother Mayjde until her recent death. She herself has a couple of long skirts and blouses, shawls and caps. She also has an excellent sling which the old man, the neighbor, taught her to make. This sling has an extended distance range and can shoot both large and small stones.

Powers or Strengths: Sandruhoe can shoot poison spit from her mouth very accurately hitting targets over quite a distance (15 to 20 yards). The longer between usage the more poisonous it is, but it takes at least 24 hours after a spit to work at all. She/he is also an excellent shot with a sling and stones, seldom missing a target.

Magic - some snakes, nagas, have some magical abilities. Whether Sandruhoe has inherited any of these from her snake heritage is unknown.

Combat Abilities - Excellent shot with poison spit and sling and stones. When Sandruhoe wears no clothes she/he can slither at incredible speeds over ground like a snake. She is also able to slither up trees or walls like a snake and can hang by her snake tail by curling it around any object of the right size. She can also swim well, like a snake and can crawl through underground passages which look as if they'd be too small for her size. However, she is a large snake and cannot get into an ordinary snake hole unless it is a large snake hole.

Weaknesses and Flaws: Sandruhoe is very awkward when trying to navigate upright. She appears to be a cripple. She also is always aware of her snake body and trying to hide it which makes her behavior strange. She has not discovered a way of using her special snake abilities, all of which seem like a bitter curse to her.

History
background:
Mayjde and her husband lived in a village in Xixbythe south of the Lake at the edge of the fertile area. They were not rich, but they had enough to get along and they were happy enough. But after some years Mayjde still had not given birth and her husband wanted an heir, so he began to get cross, more and more often getting drunk, and sometimes outright angry, taking it out on Mayjde. At worst he might hit her when he was drunk until she was all black and blue.
Mayjde knew she had to do something about it.
There were rumors of a witch who lived in the Dust, as the area to the south beyond the fertile plain was called. This witch was known to be able to cure infertility. So Mayjde set off one day to see if something could be done about her childless situation.
The witch:
It took a whole day for Mayjde to get to the cottage where the witch lived. But she knew it when she got there because there was a grove of tall trees which were very noticeable in the dusty scrub brush landscape. In the midst of the trees was a red house and when she arrived the witch was already coming out the door. "What is it?" asked the witch.
Mayjde didn't hestitate even though she felt frightened. "My husband wants to have a son," she said.
"Ha," said the witch. "And you think I can get you one."
"It is said you can," said Mayjde.
"For a son, you must pay me a gold crown."
"Oh," said Mayjde in despair. "Our family is not rich. I don't have a gold crown."
"Well, what do you have?" asked the witch.
Mayjde was confused. She didn't really have anything except the sausage and loaf of bread she'd brought along to eat on the way, and the tightly woven fine woolen scarf she wore to keep warm.
"All right," said the witch. "Give me the scarf. But I cannot promise you anything." With that she went into the house and began brewing some kind of soup. When it was finished she gave Mayjde a bowl. "Eat it all," said the witch.
When Mayjde had finished, she was very tired and the witch told her to lay on the bed which was nothing more than a large wooden plank with a rug over it.
The next morning Mayjde woke up and the witch sent her home with the rest of her bread and sausage. Within a few weeks Mayjde knew that she was with child.
birth:
The day of the birth, Mayjde's husband was out in the fields and that was fine. Men were not supposed to be there during births. As it was, the birth was easy. Mayjde breathed a sigh of relief when she felt the baby slide out. She had hoped she would not need a midwife, because that cost money. But all had gone well without one.
Mayjde bent over to pick up the whimpering newborn and screamed. It was no normal baby. It had a head, shoulders and arms, but beyond the stomach there were no legs, just the round tubular body of a snake covered with tan scaly snake skin. Mayjde jumped up and ran to grab her butcher knife in order to destroy this monster. But when she came back, the baby looked at her in surprise with its clear wide open eyes and then it began to cry. Mayjde couldn't help it. She felt overwhelming pity for the little baby. She quickly pulled the cover over the baby's bottom half and saw only its human looking top half and she said softly, "what a beautiful baby you are." And it was true. Mayjde took the baby to her breast and it began to suckle hungrily. When it finished Mayjde put the baby to sleep and looked at its content face. "Maybe you should not live. Your life will not be good," she whispered. "But I love you anyway. Your name will be Sandruhoe (which means creature of the dust in the local language)." .
When her husband came home that evening, Mayjde said, "we have a little girl."
Her husband grunted, "why isn't it a boy?"
"Next time," said Mayjde weakly. She had wrapped the baby so that only its head was visible. But her husband didn't even look.
For a time things were a bit better nonetheless. The baby seemed to be thriving and Mayjde's husband was already talking about the next baby that was going to be a boy. Mayjde was careful to keep the lower part of the baby well covered all the time.
But one hot day, Mayjde was out tending the garden. The baby had managed to swat the blankets away and its snake body was visible. Mayjde's husband happened to walk into the room just then and saw the baby. "What is this?" he howled. He grabbed the snake and the whole baby came with it. Mayjde heard him and dashed into the house. "It's a monster," he screamed. "I will kill it."
"Oh no," Mayjde cried as she saw him holding the baby up by the tail.
He turned to her and said, "What is the matter with you, keeping such a thing in our house. Why didn't you kill it the minute it was born?"
There was nothing Mayjde could say. He let the child fall to the floor and headed for the kitchen. Mayjde knew he was going to get the butcher knife to kill it. She couldn't bear it. So she grabbed the child and a blanket and ran out. There wasn't much time but she found a place to hide the baby and then quickly wrapped a bunch of twigs and leaves in the blanket and ran the other direction, so that when her husband came out of the house with the butcher knife he would follow her and hopefully not find the baby.
And so it was. She hid the bundle under a thick prickly bush. Her husband, raging like a bull stormed to the bush and began hacking at the bundle. But he must have been so distraught that he didn't even notice that the cracking sound was not bones, but pieces of wood. When he was finished he came back in the house where Mayjde sat crying.
For supper that evening Mayjde made a cold soup with ten times more alcohol than usual and she added some berries that made people sleepy. Her husband fell asleep quickly after dinner. Mayjde gathered up her few belongings, some food, and a blanket for the baby. Then she went to the place where she'd hidden it and found it buried half way in the earth and fast asleep. "Come, little Sandruhoe," she said. "We are going away." And so she began to walk to the south, into the dusty scrub, past the place where the witch lived and then on for six more days.
The place was desolate. There was only scrub brush and gravelly earth. There were hardly any creatures to be seen and she had passed no one on the path for almost two days. That is when she saw the abandoned house. "Here," she said to her baby. "Maybe this can be our home."
The house had a bed, a table and chairs, pots, pans and other things a home would need. But it was covered with cobwebs and dust. It looked as if no one had been there in years. But without water...Mayjde looked over the yard and finally saw a broken down pile of wood. She pushed the wood away and saw that it covered a hole. She dropped a rock down and heard a splash. It's a well, she thought. We can survive here. But I wonder what happened to the people.

Two days later Mayjde heard the distant clopping of a donkey. She watched nervously until a figure appeared. As it came closer she could see that a very old man sat on the donkey, so she went outside to meet him. "Does anyone live here?" she asked when he was close enough.
"Long dead," said the man.
"Then I can stay," she said.
"I suppose," he answered drearily.
"Is there a village anywhere?"
"Somewhere," he said. As he did not go one, Mayjde got a little impatient, stamped her foot and grunted. "There's a market," he said then. "Every two weeks on Mondays. It's down there." He pointed to where he'd come from. "Well, good luck," he said, not quite as despondent as he'd been at first, and he went on.
He hadn't seemed very friendly, but two Mondays later he came by again and said, "do you want to come along to the market?"
"Yes," said Mayjde.
And so it was that Mayjde and Sandruhoe found a new place to live. The old man who lived five miles away was their nearest neighbor. He was a little gruff, but always helpful.

Pretty soon Mayjde noticed that Sandruhoe although her face looked human had a strange mouth. Her tongue was longer than normal, rough and pointed at the end. But this did not hinder her from eating and drinking. However, later when the baby began to talk, her language was hard to understand, but Mayjde quickly learned her peculiarities and had no problem with it.

Now Mayjde was a poor woman living in the sparsely settled infertile area. She scraped together a meager living, hunting the quail, rabbits and other small creatures that survived in the scrub brush for them to eat, and sometimes there was enough to take to the market to trade for other things. And so it was that Sandruhoe grew into a clever and helpful child. Mayjde dressed it in long skirts in order to hide that snake body even though she did not know whether this child was a boy or a girl.

Sandruhoe could move around in the skirts, holding her upper body erect while snaking along. But it was a slow and awkward way to move. Sometimes Sandruhoe would go into the brush and take off the skirts. She would lay down on the ground, press her arms against her body and move like a snake. Then she became fast, lithe, and streamlined.

When they went to the little village to get supplies, Mayjde did her best to hide Sandruhoe's strangeness, but people noticed her crippled gait and her incomprehensible language, though mostly she said nothing at all. Other children would point and laugh. "Ignore them," Mayjde would say. And Sandruhoe said nothing, but she did not like it.

One day when a gaggle of boys and girls were being especially obnoxious Sandruhoe had an overwhelming urge to spit at the loudest of them. To her surprise a powerful arrow of spit burst from her mouth, traveling unerringly the rather long distance of six yards to where the girl stood and splatted in her face. The girl screamed and ran away. Later Sandruhoe saw her again being dragged home by her terrified mother. The girl's face had ballooned up to twice it's size and become a violent purple and fushia color.
After that Sandruhoe began to suspect her spit was rather unusual, so she went into the scrub brush to find a rabbit. She aimed the spit which again came out like arrow, hitting the rabbit and knocking it down. When she reached for it, it was dead. "Wow," thought Sandruhoe. After that she began to practice, perfecting her aim, increasing the distance she could make it fly.
Mayjde was surprised when Sandruhoe would bring home the animals. "How do you do that?" she asked. "You didn't use a bow and arrows or even my sling, did you?"
"No," said Sandruhoe, "but I can do it."
"Hmmm," said Mayjde. "Perhaps I ought at least to teach you to use the sling. You are old enough."
"Yes," said Sandruhoe. "I want to learn."
Mayjde had basically accepted that Sandruhoe was a cripple as everyone thought because of her awkwardness and difficulty moving around and talking. She had never seen Sandruhoe slither through the dust and had no idea how fast and lithe she was. But now she discovered how well and how quickly Sandruhoe learned to use the sling. It made life easier for them because now there were two of them hunting in the scrub and Sandruhoe it turned out was good at spurring animals and snagging them whether she did it with the sling or her poison spit (which she never used when Mayjde was with her). They had more food to eat and more to trade at the market.
One day as the old man was driving to market with Mayjde and Sandruhoe, a rabbit appeared from behind a scrub bush. Sandruhoe pulled her sling and a stone from her pocket and shot it. "Rabbit soup for supper," she said and grinned.
The old man laughed and said, "you are quick and a good shot, but your sling is not so good."
"Oh," said Sandruhoe. "It seemed good enough to me."
"Ah," said the old man. "Indeed, but I can show you how to make a better sling that can shoot much further."
Sandruhoe's eyes lit up. "OK," she said. "Show me, please."
So it was that Sandruhoe grew up. Her mother eventually began to get old and frail and Sandruhoe had no reason to leave. She felt obligated to take care of her mother. Neither of them had ever felt a desire to go back to Lake Xixbythe and so they stayed together in their little cottage in the scrub.

One day the old man did not appear on market Monday. "I am worried," said Mayjde.
"Did something happen?" asked Sandruhoe frowning. She had come to love the old man as a father, for he was the only father she'd ever had.
"I don't know," said Mayjde. "Maybe we better go to his house and see."
"But we've never been there," said Sandruhoe.
"We know where it is, don't we."
"Then we must go."
So they trudged the 5 miles up the dusty tracks that led to the old man's house. It was surrounded by a high fence and there was no gate. They pounded on the wooden fence and then shouted. But nothing happened.
"How can we get in?" Mayjde asked.
Sandruhoe walked around the whole fence and spotted one spot with a little hole. "Here," she said.
"It's too small," said Mayjde.
"Not for me," said Sandruhoe. "But I must take my clothes off."
"And if he sees you?"
"He won't."
Sandruhoe slithered through the hole and crawled up to the window and peered in. She could see the old man lying in his bed with his eyes closed, but he wasn't dead. She wanted to let her mother in, but still she could not find a gate. "Push my clothes through the hole," she said, "so I can go in to him."
Sandruhoe opened the door to the little cabin. It wasn't locked. "Old man," she said softly. "What has happened to you?"
The old man opened his eyes. "Ah you," he murmured. "How did you get in?"
"What can I do for you?" asked Sandruhoe.
The old man closed his eyes again and Sandruhoe thought he was going to fade away. "Don't die," she said.
"No," said the old man. "There is something." He was too weak to say more. So Sandruhoe stood there and watched his belabored breathing.
Suddenly he opened his eyes again. "You..can..do..this..spit..in my cup..put..some..water..in."
"But it's poison," said Sandruhoe frightened. She had never let anyone, not even Mayjde know about her spit.
"Double water," said the old man.
So Sandruhoe mixed her spit with double water and gave it to the old man. Within a few minutes he sat up and smiled. "You see!", he said.
"You knew," said Sandruhoe in amazement.
"I knew," he said. "But now we don't have much time. I am going to die soon and your potion will only help for a while. I must show you some things."
"My mother is outside, waiting," said Sandruhoe.
"Ah," he said. "Well, open the gate and let her in."
Sandruhoe shrugged her shoulders. "Right," he said. He walked to a spot that looked the same as any other spot on the fence, pushed on a log and the gate opened.
Then he led them to a little shed which was attached to the house. "Here is where I work," he said. Inside there was a bench, some fine tools and some clumps of gold. "I make the jewelry."
"Then you didn't inherit it," said Sandruhoe in surprise.
"No," he said. "But no one must know. And now I will show you where the gold comes from."
He led them to a rocky spot some distance from his house. "Use it prudently," he said. "It's yours. But don't tell anyone."

Some months later it happened again that the old man didn't appear on market day. Sandruhoe and Mayjda hurried to his little compound, hoping that Sandruhoe could save him again. But this time it was too late. "He was a very old man," said Mayjda. "But I am going to miss him terribly. He was really our only friend here in this godforsaken place."
"I will miss him too," said Sandruhoe. "He was really the only father I ever had." Both of them could not hold the tears back.
But finally Mayjda said, "we ought to clean up here and bury him. As far as I know he has no family, so we are his family."
They packed up his small supply of food, the gold clumps he'd been working on and his jewelry-making tools. His clothes and bedding were old and Mayjda thought it ought to be buried with him. But in his cabinet and trunk they found a set of porcelain that looked as if it could have belonged to a noble. He also had silverware made of real silver and in the trunk was a tapestry woven with silk, gold and silver strands. "How strange," said Mayjda letting her hand slide over the beautifully designed cloth. I wonder who he really was."
They also took his wagon and donkey, packed the things in it and went home.
No one ever came to visit them, so Mayjda thought it would be OK to use the porcelain and silverware and not hide it away. The tapistry she put over the bed as a cover. "It's almost as if we were rich," she'd say to Sandruhoe went a ray of sunlight touched the golden strands.
Both of them also learned to use the jewelry tools and got better and better at it. They crafted jewelry for themselves which they wore at home, but they didn't dare let anyone know and when they went to market everything was hidden away.
And thus the seasons went by. For years nothing much happened and Sandruhoe altered between feeling like she was getting old, dull and without energy on some days, but other days she felt an almost irresistable urge to escape. But Mayjda was really getting old. Sandruhoe knew that if she left, Mayjda could not manage alone. So she stayed.