Carys grew up weak and alone, her dreams her only welcome company. In the winter, she would warm herself imagining, imagining what it would be like to be wrapped up entirely by a snake, or what if the whole world was a fireplace? These were delightful and strange possibilities to her, but when she shared them with adults, they invariably found them frightening and queer. They would beat her even worse when she indulged her creativity, for it always manifested in these ways.
Her dreams were always like that. Fire or snakes. The dead and the living, signing away their souls. Men with goat legs and two penises speaking sermons at grand pulpits, or giant blue insects carrying spears. These last always reminded her of herself. Her with her cold-to-the-touch chitinous blue skin and her large, orb-like black eyes and her single large horn on the left side of her head.
She knew she wasn't like her family. That was why they beat her, not the dreams. Her brothers had bad dreams some times and they didn't get the belt. It was her that her mother and father hated. Not her quirks or bad habits such as her eager and insistent questioning about the "bad guys" in myth and legend, but her.
Somehow her presence was hurting the family. That's what they told her when they threw her away, at least. She didn't understand it, she was only eight years old. What could she do, in the cold and unwelcoming land of Talingrad?
Having had a respect for the "right and proper authorities" beaten into her, she never stole or theived or broke the law in any way while she lived out on the streets. It was her dreams that brought her to safety.
Near death from the cold and half starved, she found her salvation. Having bonded so intensely wifh the idea of warmth being brought to her by a big snake, entirely wrapped about her, she awoke one morning to find exactly that. It didn't stop her from moving, nor did anyone else appear to notice it. But it smiled at her and kept her warm. Sometimes it even spoke.
Carys was starting to come to grips with the snake (whom she had named CZJ, pronounced sausage or cizzej or Catherine Zeta Jones) being just her imaginary friend when it asked her a peculiar and hair raising question. It asked her if she wished to sign her life away to ensure that she would never die until it would serve her maker.
She signed it immediately, using blood from the tip of her finger in lieu of ink.
Things became simpler from then on. She was adopted by a bishop and allowed to stay in the church, where she studied religion and law and discovered the god responsible for saving her: Asmodeus.
Secretly dedicating her life to Him, she pledged her service to a realtor and contract lawyer, asking that he would take her as apprentice while she served as one of his clerks.
A cold and bitter man, she found pleasure and joy in the twenty years she spent at his side. She learned much by watching, learned that mercy was something better not given or shown until it benefitted you, for example.
Every day was the same routine, one that she thrived in. In the harsh winters, the other clerks would beg for a handful of coals to stoke the fires, but their master, Marley, would refuse it, and they would be left to their chattering and shivering, but she was never cold anymore. All she had to do was pretend, remember, and Cizzej would wrap around her.
It was bliss. Bliss right up til the day Marley died and the firm was taken up by one of his partners and she herself was forgotten about. The man ran a tighter ship and fired her during a round of layoffs, near the winter solstice.
Now 45, she began her own office as a contract lawyer and notary, but complaints that she stamped her forms with a five pointed star became an investigation of her life, and a discovery of her worship not of Mitra, the state god, but of Asmodeus, Prince of Darkness.
She was publicly shamed and humiliated as they brought her out of her home, and then into the depths of Branderscar Prison.
