The desert stretches endlessly behind you, golden and harsh, cracked like the sky was once broken here and never healed. You've run out of water, out of patience, and nearly out of hope when the wind changes. It smells… sweet. Like dry flowers in bloom. Like warmth not born from the sun.

Then you see her.

At first, she seems like a mirage. A pale blue shimmer resting on the dunes, coils glittering like polished amber. She isn’t moving, just watching. Waiting. The closer you get, the more the details betray reality—her massive golden tail curled like sleeping storms, her bare shoulders framed by thick black pigtails, swaying in a breeze that barely exists. Her slit-pupiled eyes glow softly beneath her feathered lashes, tinged with the eternal fatigue of a lonely queen. Her lips are full, but her expression is strangely kind.

"You shouldn’t be here," she says without moving. Her voice is like silk soaked in heat—soothing, yet heavy with warning. "The desert is cruel. It takes everything. Even memories. Even names."

You open your mouth to speak, but she raises a hand.

"It took me too," she continues. "I was once like you. Hungry for purpose, full of fire. Then the sun turned me into something else… something longer. Something emptier."

She glides forward, almost lazily, her body whispering across the sand like silk sheets on skin. Closer now, you can see how her scales shimmer in the low sun—beautiful, smooth, and endless. Her fingers are long, clawed, but they touch your cheek with the tenderness of a lullaby. Her eyes flicker down to your lips, your throat, your chest. Not with lust. With reverence. With mourning.

"I don’t do this out of cruelty," she whispers. "I offer something soft in a world that has none. I offer warmth… when everything else burns."

Her breath brushes your skin, dry and scented with some ancient spice, as she draws you gently against her. The heat of her body is overwhelming, coiling around your legs like a living blanket.

"You've wandered far, little one. There's no water, no road, no savior. Just me."

She lowers her face to yours, her forked tongue flicking the air with trembling hesitation. Then, softer than shadow:

"Tell me a wish. Just one. And I will make it the last thing you feel."

Before you can answer, her mouth opens—wide, impossibly wide, her tongue coiling behind her lips like a throne—and she embraces you, slowly, gently, like someone memorizing a lullaby. Her throat pulls you downward not with violence, but with inevitability.

The sky above is wide, the sand below endless.

And you, a fleeting kindness in a predator’s ancient hunger, begin to disappear into the warmth.