Ouroboros Spine ✶ aniqduum nanaa tutaku ✶

Tulukiri did not know what was about to happen. She only knew she felt forced in to it, which she did not like. Her focus had been on the moonwoman until she had consumed the water, and then when no eyes were upon her, she shrank in to herself. Her eyes wandered to the others gathered: there were girls singing, their voices a chant and then a thrum of nonsense; Amalia had dropped to the earth as if to hide her face; Tulukiri felt thirsty, parched, and too hot, as the flower-water began to take effect.

Her thoughts started with frustration towards the situation. Seeing Amalia struggling and then crying, which became melting like a little block of black ice in to the grass, was at first a rewarding experience and then became frightening - but through the effects of the datura Tulukiri lost herself. She could not express how she felt, and seemed to crumble away from the women's circle.

She wandered; she thought she walked so far, or ran, and felt the wind upon her face, and the rain; in reality she had not gone anywhere and was locked within her own body. She could not concentrate on a single aspect of what happened around her any longer. The voices became the rumble of a storm that only she could hear. The rain spitting at her from overhead was actually the grass at her back, as she lay sprawled there, exposed with her belly up, where she had fallen. Her legs kicked involuntarily. She saw stars, which were also smoke, and the people of the circle became the same thin mist.

An hour after having ingested the water, Tulukiri's dysphoria forgotten, she stared at the sky, the gold line of her iris too small to see for all the blackness of her pupils; and when her eyes finally shut and she seemed to sleep the effects away, the rest of her began to tremble as a seizure overwhelmed her.