30-minute writing exercise: fire, salt water, snake

A snake does not move as we move, and we comprehend much through movement. Seemingly endless rings of muscle contorting around cages and cages of bone, somehow producing graceful, predatory function. How to empathize with a creature such as this? And so too, how to comprehend its motives, her motives, as she approaches?

Her movements are intentional, they must be. Fleeting eye contact, each glance holding its careful weight; her head unmoving as she glides across the pavement; her ornamentation: hair, jewellery, clothing, things for which I have no frame of reference, no memory of weight, no sense of preparation, all of them moving with and around her. My attention is momentarily transfixed, my brain hypnotized into paralysis at the mercy of her intent. My anxiety could never break the spell, prey that must play its part.

She slithers past, into the arms of the man with the hat and the expensive-looking shoes. I can feel what he feels. I can muster sympathies for his plight. After the encounter, I go on about my way, content not to become food for a creature I can never understand.