Lamia's Cup (Patreon)

The cup had come from an ancient dig. She had helped unearth it. Unlike so many, it looked new. It still was as shiny as the day it had been formed by the potter who created it thousands of years ago. To say this was unusual was the understatement of the decade (or maybe of all time). Pottery was usually found in fragments that took years of patient effort to reassemble. Not so this one. It could have been some kind of modern forgery but for the observation that the tomb had its seals intact and had been buried under nearly 50 meters of volcanic ejecta. It had taken a strong earthquake to reveal the location of the cup and the trove of less well preserved items.

Fidi was part of the excavation as a graduate student. She hadn’t discovered the cup, of course. Her discoveries were more mundane: pot shards, part of a broken amphora, and a cooking plate. The cup had some strange compulsion for her. It drew her and compelled her in a way that no other piece had ever done. After the day’s excavations were complete, she’d often return to the tent that held the strange cup to admire it (and truth be told) to carefully hold it.

Four days before the end of the season, she felt a compulsion, an ancient geas, come over her. She HAD to drink from the cup. Excusing herself from the dig, she returned near midday and took the cup again. This time, instead of returning it to its carefully crafted foam housing, she poured water from the pitcher in the fridge. For a moment, nothing happened and then, inexplicably, the water warmed to near boiling. Regardless of the heat of the day and the temperature of the drink, Fidi quaffed the contents. It no longer tasted like water. It had a metallic taste with something else, something she couldn’t readily identify.  

With the same suddenness it had come upon her, the compulsion left her. She found herself standing, cup in hand, staring at the distant hills. Quickly she repacked the cup and returned to the dig. By morning, her back was covered by tiny scales and her coccyx had separated into a short, mobile tail. The tail was covered by the strange brown and yellow mottled scales that she was sure she’d seen somewhere before in her treks around southern Alberta.

The next day, she again was driven to drink from the cup. When the sun stood at its highest, she drank the hot strange tasting brew conjured by the cup.

By beginning of the third day, she was feeling ill, far too ill to head out with everyone to the dig site. The expedition leader wanted to send her to the local town’s doctor but Fidi convinced him it was just a flu and that it would pass. Her tiny tail was fully five meters long now and was becoming nearly impossible to hide. She definitely didn’t want a doctor poking about nor did she want this revealed to the world. Maybe it would all just go away …

Midday on the third day came required another drink from the cup. This time, the effects were sudden and unexpected. Fido’s insides felt like they were burning, twisting, writhing. Fidi barely had time to repack the cup before she doubled over in pain. They found her at the end of the day in the assembly tent, coiled around a pile of cushions from the chairs. She stared at the expedition leader as he entered the tent, her eyes with oval irises and slit pupils. As he approached, she began to hiss loudly, her snake-like tongue flicking about nervously. Unbidden the tip of her tail rose and began to shake, the unmistakable buzz of an angry rattlesnake. She opened her mouth revealing a pair of pointed fangs that had pivoted from the roof of her mouth.

Not unexpectedly, everyone fled the tent. The expedition leader didn’t return until hours later with an animal control officer and a tranquilizer dart. By that time, Fidi had slithered from the tent unopposed and disappeared into the hills. For years afterwards, the locals, when a goat or sheep went missing, would blame it on the she devil in the hills. None of the locals went after her. None of the hunters that tried returned. In time, the locals just accepted a few missing animals as a tribute to Fidi. After all, it could be worse. Children were small and tended to wander and, at least for the present, Fidi restricted her predation to animals. It could be worse.

Woman: MJRanum
Snake: Creative Commons