After a while of being alone with Alexander, both Michelle and he noticed a presence approaching them.
It was Mare, back in her human form, carrying the small snake wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet.
"I know why it did that," was the first thing she said.
Michelle lifted a brow. "Why?"
Mare glanced at the snake around her wrist, her expression hard to read.
"It just dislikes you," she finally said.
Four words, but they were still able to fairly surprise soone like Michelle.
Why would a snake dislike her the first ti it saw her?
"Did I do sothing to it?" she questioned.
Mare shook her head.
"You just don’t sll human even though you have the aura and presence of a human."
Mare’s words reminded Michelle of the fact that snakes had an extrely acute sense of sll.
So the snake was able to sll that while she should have been a human by the standards of the world, sothing was off about her scent.
"But that’s enough of a reason for it to get aggressive?" she asked in confusion.
Mare shook her head. "No..."
She looked down again at the snake.
"But this one is still a child. It reacts instinctively most of the ti. Only after attacking did it realize you are more powerful than it and did it stop."
Michelle was fairly satisfied with that explanation, but it also arose another concern within her.
If a baby snake was able to sense her inhumanity from a single whiff once it got close to her, just how accurate was the sll of an adult snake?
Or did that sense not improve in life?
Well, maybe there was even a chance that it deteriorated as snakes grew.
Not having the answer, Michelle asked Mare again.
Well, and Mare didn’t have an exact answer.
Apparently, it depended on the exact species of snake.
So snakes, like herself, hatched with fully developed senses of sll and it never changed unless they got sohow hurt or poisoned.
Then, so snakes were born with underdeveloped scent senses and it had to develop in their life.
And, finally, there were also those who had proportionally more sll‑sensing cells as young snakes compared to their adult forms.
In other words, new cells for slling didn’t develop as they grew, shrinking the proportion towards the rest of the body, thus reducing the effectiveness.
That raised the question which category the little snake belonged to.
If it was anything other than the second option, Michelle would have to be careful around its kind, because they could sll the strangeness in her.
"Will it still be hostile towards ?" she asked.
If it could sll her inhumanity, did that an it also wanted to kill her?
Its earlier actions were suggesting that.
Mare shook her head.
"In the first place, it wasn’t being hostile. It was just shocked by the presence of sothing it had never encountered, and its instincts decided to protect it by aggression. As I said, it’s just a baby."
Michelle nodded a bit.
"It’s quite docile in your hands. Because you are a Venom Jade Serpent?"
"Partially..." Mare responded with a simple nod.
"Another thing causing this is that baby snakes are usually calr when around other snakes."
Michelle listened to Mare while looking at the little snake.
It really looked calm in Mare’s presence.
"Will it still be scared of ?" she finally asked.
Mare looked at the creature coiled around her wrist and shrugged.
"I did explain to it you won’t hurt it, but I can’t make it go against its instincts. You can try though."
Michelle walked over to Mare and extended her hands palms‑up to her.
She had a theory that if Mare placed the snake in her hands instead of Michelle taking it herself, the snake could be calr.
Mare understood what Michelle wanted so she got to work.
Carefully, she uncoiled the little snake from around her wrist and put it on Michelle’s palms.
The little snake ford a coil around itself and lifted its head to look up at Michelle’s face.
It remained calm, just looking at her with clear eyes.
That was a difference compared to its earlier state.
"I like this one. It’s smart..." Michelle smiled a bit.
Slowly, she moved her hands so the snake could stay only on one of her palms.
With her other hand free, Michelle looked at the finger that still had traces of her blood.
Pressing on it with her thumb, the already nearly closed wound started bleeding a bit again.
Like that, Michelle brought it in front of the little snake, but not close enough to touch it.
Seeing that, Mare frowned a bit.
"Are you trying to provoke it right now?" she didn’t understand what her dear contracted master was doing.
The last ti she did it, the snake ended up fainting, so why was she doing it all over again?
But there was one big difference in what Michelle was doing at the mont, and what she had been doing a while ago.
Back then, she had the bleeding finger in the snake’s mouth, making the blood trickle over its fang.
But at the mont, she wasn’t even touching the creature with the bleeding finger.
The snake too seed to realize the difference in the two situations.
Its reaction was much milder.
It did coil back and put so distance between itself and Michelle’s bleeding finger, but the movent was slower and calr.
Michelle didn’t do anything more and just watched the snake.
The snake had its gaze fixated on Michelle’s finger, bobbing its head from side to side.
Michelle hadn’t encountered that many snakes since becoming Michelle Grace, but she did notice a detail about them (she mostly noticed it on Mare).
When snakes bobbed their heads like that, they were thinking about sothing, weighing their options.
The fact that the little snake was doing that ant it was intelligent, though it wasn’t really able to show since it was still so young.
But that wasn’t really that much of a surprise.
Michelle was already in the upper realm.
There, nearly all beasts and monsters were intelligent enough to even be able to communicate with other species even if they didn’t have enough power to develop vocal cords.
But, of course, younger ones were always less intelligent since they were still developing.
Actually, eting a non‑intelligent beast in the upper realm was extre rarity.
It was so rare that so extre people took them as pets, just for the sake of it.
But that was a minority of people.
Michelle continued watching the little snake.
After a while, it stopped bobbing its head and finally did sothing.
And Michelle was honestly surprised.
So it seed the little snake was sohow similar to herself.
The little creature actually crawled closer, getting just in front of her bleeding finger.
Then, it spit out its forked tongue and actually took a lick of Michelle’s blood.
Even Mare wasn’t expecting that.
Even to her, Michelle’s blood (contaminated by Mavreth’s poison) slled disgusting.
Even she wouldn’t dare lick it.
But the little snake did just that.
It lapped up a drop of blood on its forked tongue and pulled it into its mouth.
It was clear the snake was curious about Michelle, but the braveness to lick sothing it had been terrified of just a mont ago...
Michelle couldn’t tell if the creature was really intelligent or just stupid.
Was it trying to kill itself?
Because there definitely was a reason why its instincts earlier made it so scared of her blood.
Even Mare was reacting to it unpleasantly.
Just what was the little snake trying?
Not just Mare and Michelle were surprised.
Alexander also didn’t expect that.
But there was no way for him to anticipate that since he just randomly picked up the snake, thinking Michelle would like it.
And he was right; Michelle did like it.
But aside from that, he knew nothing else about the snake.
From how the snake was acting, just as Michelle, Alexander could see that the snake and Michelle had so personality similarities.
Alexander couldn’t exactly tell if that was a good or a bad thing.
But so it seed that Michelle liked the gift he got her.
Everyone was so focused on the fact that the little snake dared to taste Michelle’s (probably) poisonous blood, that they forgot what happens when a beast swallows a bit of a human’s blood.
And Michelle was still partially a human, so so of the human rules still applied to her.
So, it was quite a surprise when a mark appeared on Michelle’s forehead.
The mark she had already seen quite a few tis, as it always appeared on a beast opposite to her.
And at the mont, the little snake also had a miniature version of it on its forehead.
A snake coiled around a thorny rose, the thorns stabbing it, as the snake had its head above the rose, jaws wide open to swallow a butterfly that was sitting on the flower.
"That daring bastard!" Mare muttered with sothing like a smile on her face.
It was the kind of smile one had when a bit angry, but also helpless and impressed at the sa ti.
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