Returning to his apartment, Safiyy found his smile morphing into a wistful stare directed at the frustratingly apathetic floor. This commonplace dwelling had been his first after his hard-earned return from the enveloping woods. As he lapsed into his couch with a heavy sigh, he turned to the flowerpot filled with weeds resting on a side-table and stared intently almost as if imploring the flowerpot to finally relent. A flood of memories came rushing back—he recalled hurling his mangled body at an expanse of weeds as the serpent had slithered closer and closer. He unrolled his sleeve up to his elbow and beheld the dreaded mark yet again: etched on the centre of his forearm were the contours of a massive blood-red fang.
“The serpent has been mastered,” he whispered to himself, almost as if giving himself a pep-talk. “It can no longer leave the lair. It won’t.”
Safiyy proceeded to lift off his shirt, groaning with agony as the fabric tore through his skin yet again. His chest was dotted with countless bruises. Shifting from sitting to laying on the couch, he slipped his left hand under the coffee table and extracted a half-finished painting featuring the right half of Mildi’s face. Safiyy’s smile staged a comeback as he ran his fingertips across that protruding cheek while staring back into the eye glinting with naughtiness.
“It’ll all come back to you,” he whispered to himself. “Your soul knows me. I have faith in your soul.”
A faint knock at the door prompted a slow walk of agony back to the door with Safiyy slowly donning his shirt back on. The door opened and revealed the wild bicyclist from earlier.
“Here you go, sir,” said the little girl while rolling forward the little bicycle into the entrance and attempting to steal a few glances into the dwelling of this enigmatic man. “May I bring you some roses for that poor pot, sir? It looks awfully barren with just those weeds.”
“No, it’s alright, Maryam. You did good today,” Safiyy said, patting the girl’s head. “If you really want to bring me something, bring me more weeds—let the rest of the world get all the roses they want.”
“I’ll try to get some from the outskirts of the Baphim Forest, okay, sir?”
“No! Absolutely not,” Safiyy exclaimed, his brows rising like wrathful billows. “Do not go anywhere near that accursed forest, Maryam!”
“Alright, sir,” Maryam said, taken aback by this sudden outburst. “I won’t.”
“Steer clear of it, okay?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Now run off to your parents. We wouldn’t want to worry them.”
Walking to his kitchen, he cracked open a cabinet, revealing around ten matchboxes. He grabbed one matchbox and returned to the couch, placing the matchbox on the coffee table. He slipped open the box and beheld the sight of eight slender legs stirring atop a wide nest of webs.
Taking his eyes off the spider inhabiting the matchbox, Safiyy sighed yet again. “Mildi … Mildi … Mildi. I miss thee. We miss thee, don’t we Tobby?”
With his grief echoed in a series of increasingly intense groans, Safiyy succumbed to a deep slumber as Mildi’s elusive smile flashed before his mind.
Miles and miles away, a man donning a dark cloak kneeled before a tiny narrow enclosure located on a rocky crevice on a seemingly random spot of the Baphim forest. The scene of decaying leaves and rot invaded the man’s nostrils as he kneeled utterly still waiting to be received. Only seconds later, a faint rustle reanimated his focus as he witnessed a slithering mass appear at the entrance.
“Master,” the man whispered almost as if any loudness on his part would cause unimaginable offence.
The serpent hissed. “If you have returned with failure again, utter your final words.”
“I have found her, master.”
“Excellent! At last. At laaast,” the serpent snarled with delight. “Bring her to me. Bring me the woman who stripped me of my body. BRING … HER!”
“What of Safiyy, master? Her met her in a café the day of her birth.”
“Safiyy … worry not about him. The mark remains strong.”
“Thy will be done, master. Thy will be done.”
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