[ Getting to sleep is a struggle these days: there are a great many things on any given person's mind, and even more work to be done. Wasting hours sleeping is a luxury he affords himself only sparingly, fitfully. So he's only a couple of hours into unconsciousness, sunk fast and deep into the blanket of rest all the same, when something comes creeping.
His body's so desperate for rest that it battles its own recently refreshed instinct to leap up the second it senses so much as a disturbance in the night. The moving something in the night makes it up into the bed, under the covers, makes it halfway up his leg before sleep's grip starts to give.
From there it's one bleary moment of denial, one of dim recognition, then his eyes are wide open in the dark and his covers pulled back, hand swatting down and splintering a litany of fragile little ribs as it goes in blind pursuit of the slithering invader.
Turns out even big shot sorcerers have gut reactions to creepy crawlies in the dead of night. ]
[Connected to the construct as Ianthe was, the closest of those damaged ribs pulled themselves together, though the few that had separated from the main body remained in Strange's bed like lost breadcrumbs. Skelesnake seemed undeterred by the swat, continuing to slither up onto Strange's thigh.
Only there did it pause and stare at him with empty eye sockets. One could almost imagine a forked tongue tasting the air. Curved fangs were visible in the construct's mouth but it didn't make an aggressive move. It just waited there with it's little note.]
[ It takes him a few frenzied seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim moonlight, a couple more for the tense readiness of his hand to carve out a spell to settle into stillness as he finds himself staring at - a snake.
A very much deceased snake. So dead that there isn't a scrap of flesh left on it. And yet, here it perches, staring at him.
After that and an unsteady out-breath, a quick glance to where Nami lays still sleeping in the other bed in the room (good, that would've been embarrassing), Stephen murmurs a quiet what? to the snake before spotting that note, answering his own question.
Frowning at the skeletal creature, Stephen trips his fingers through the air to release the paper. It lifts itself from its vessel and up into Stephen's hand so he can unfold it. ]
[The snake made no move while the paper was removed, staying right where it was. One unfurled, there was a brief note written in English by a hand not Ianthe's.]
Love and kisses. -I.N.
P.S. Please return Skelesnake as intact as possible to Wanda Maximoff
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80 years later....
His body's so desperate for rest that it battles its own recently refreshed instinct to leap up the second it senses so much as a disturbance in the night. The moving something in the night makes it up into the bed, under the covers, makes it halfway up his leg before sleep's grip starts to give.
From there it's one bleary moment of denial, one of dim recognition, then his eyes are wide open in the dark and his covers pulled back, hand swatting down and splintering a litany of fragile little ribs as it goes in blind pursuit of the slithering invader.
Turns out even big shot sorcerers have gut reactions to creepy crawlies in the dead of night. ]
\o/
Only there did it pause and stare at him with empty eye sockets. One could almost imagine a forked tongue tasting the air. Curved fangs were visible in the construct's mouth but it didn't make an aggressive move. It just waited there with it's little note.]
no subject
A very much deceased snake. So dead that there isn't a scrap of flesh left on it. And yet, here it perches, staring at him.
After that and an unsteady out-breath, a quick glance to where Nami lays still sleeping in the other bed in the room (good, that would've been embarrassing), Stephen murmurs a quiet what? to the snake before spotting that note, answering his own question.
Frowning at the skeletal creature, Stephen trips his fingers through the air to release the paper. It lifts itself from its vessel and up into Stephen's hand so he can unfold it. ]
no subject
Love and kisses.
-I.N.
P.S. Please return Skelesnake as intact as possible to Wanda Maximoff