Something was approaching, and she recognized the decadent scent of the boy as he neared. She was busy, so she didn't move. In the cave on a shelf, she lay playing cards. She'd been attempting solitare for the last half hour and couldn't seem to win. "Saaah!" She hissed in frustration around the same time the boy muttered something near the entrance. She threw the cards and turned from them so fast in her anger, her tail scattered the remaining cards all over.

All at once she was upon him, eyes still burning with her anger until she saw in his arms the gifts. Her expression changed to one of delight, "You return and bring Bella books! You let me see yes?" She took them, examining each, a classic and a Japanese book, "Nihon Ryoiki," she read aloud, a book of tales recounting buddist values. "These are good yes? And this," she examined the rusty thing, but it still had some sparkle to it. "Yes this will do, three gifts, three days you live as Bella promised. Come, come, the ash that falls today will burn your human skin."

Sometime since they last met, the creature had aquired a lantern, which she lit and it greatly illuminated her cavern showing just what an extensive library and treasure trove it truely was...albeit with playing cards scattered all over. She slithered among them and opened the inferno, eyes wide "This is good! Hmmm fastinating, it talks of Hell. Pah, what evils humans dream of, I will enjoy this one." She didn't think to be curious about this boy just then, not did she think to not create awkward silence. She simply stopped talking and started reading. Leaving the human to do as he pleased.

(Lol cards anyone? Or he could find some board game like checkers or something among all the books too)

She looked up from her book, "Does she know? Does Bella know this game?" She set the book aside and slithered toward the boy, encircling him and the board with her tail. "Yes, the question is, do you know how to play?" She quickly arranged all the pieces into their correct spots, Bella's side were dark mahogany, and Celeste's where a lighter cedar color.

"White moves first," she dared, urging him to begin the game. Her voice was dangerous, of course she wasn't going to eat him over it, even if she were a sore loser on occasion, this was imply entertainment and the Bellarix wanted to remain in a position that always seemed right on the verge of frightening. How trustworthy she was should always be a mystery. In some ways she was excited, she hadn't gotten to play one of these human games with another being since...well since she was human herself. Lazarus certainly took no interest in such frivolity, nor would she ask him to, the snake knew better than to try inviting any other echo into her fancy. A human like this one however, yes, he might humor her silliness.

(woah we're really doing this? xD I'm so gonna lose now xD)

So the game had begun, he her tail had a rattle she'd have shook it with excitement. She made a similar move, taking the Queen's side bishop's pawn forward two spaces to c5, holding a black-clawed finger tip to the rounded top as if she might reconsider her choice.

"So, human," she purred over the pieces watching the boy's eyes and fingers, trying to predict his next move, "do you have questions for me? Conversation or stories to offer while we play? Or perhaps you'd like a story from Bella? There is more to life and unlife than simple military motive." She lifted the finger, setting in stone the position of the pawn. When it came down to it, the serpent liked to hear herself talk, and talking to a human who had paid for his life for the day seemed just as good a conversationalist as any that she wasn't eating or wasn't pointing a gun at her.

She had always liked the knights, their L shaped pattern was unusual and sometimes harder to predict. "Well," said the snake, peering at the board considering the next move. Interesting the he reffered to himself as a piece of meat, as he perhaps was in more ways than one.

"Well, Once upon a time my name was Avion Jennivive Fletcher, my mother was from a land that no longer exists called Russia and my father from another called Britain. It was a time of chaos, though not so much as now. I went to a large religious school for girls and had excellent marks. I lived, graduated and entered a university where I went to study in Romania where I met a man. He became my husband and I was soon with child. Beautiful yes?"

She moved a king's side pawn to g6, the boy had opened his pieces up for assault and then set a protector to the field to cover the opening. How noble. She lay down on her belly, cheek against her fist held up by her elbow. The other hand lay palm down in front of her as her yellow eyes scanned the pieces. "Then the world opened up and swallowed all who lived upon it with all the storms and fires and strengths it could muster. Before we could recover from that, the monster's came, they broke into our home attacked us in the middle of the day. My husband tried to stop them but they got to me through a window while he tried to bar the door. Somehow he killed them all, but not before it was too late. I remember crying, frightened as he held me, I died right in his arms."

She was smiling at that part, a creepy smile, because her words were telling a story that should have been very sad. She didn't look sad in the slightest, perhaps a thing that came with being a monster was having a loss of sentiment for things such as love or loss. She paused, waiting for the human to make another move on the board.

Her expression became one of an almost flirtatious intrigue,

"Bella terrifies you?" She wrinkled her nose childishly and stuck out just the tip of her forked tongue, "Death happens, love happens, it begins and it ends and it begins. Because Avion and her unborn child died that day, but I didn't. I was born. I began. My husband was weeping, but he did not weep long. Bella woke up, I devoured him without even knowing who he was anymore. Of course, eventually I remembered. And of course for a time I was mortified, I was ugly, I was dead, I was hungry and a killer. Yes, Bella wept too and vomited up my crime. A human might call my experience...rather horrible, no?" She still looked amused and pondered the board, tail tip flicking like a cats. "I have been violated too, when I was too afraid to kill, one cannot f*ck a snake as a man does another being, but they can stab her, cut her, bleed her, but she lives. Do things to that which appears human still, , but Bella always lives."

She moved her bishop to h6 (pic. "Of course life goes on, or unlife. The monsters did not bother me, instead they listened, the humans feared me. I was afraid of them too. Until one tried to kill me and I could not feel the pain. I stopped being afraid then, they could not harm me. My human life had ended, there was no Avion to mourn her husband or her child, no family to mourn her in turn. And time moved until everything I had known was gone. No one remembers Avion Fletcher. A dead human. A whole world is gone," she added to this by waving her hand in the air, enunciating the word 'whole' by raising her voice by a pitch, "and will one day be a fairy tale about men in books written by rabbits. I let go of everything that was not mine anymore. What is there when ones whole life is human and then one lets go of all things? There is blood and time and more blood. Beautiful death, Bellus Mortus, that is all there is. Bella chose a new name, she had to embrace what was truly important no? Knowledge. Yes. My books. Hm? I collect that which humans will forget. that which they need. That which is truly valuable. You have heard of the Library of Alexandia? I will build a library of Bellamortu.- Do you know how old I am?"

She cut off with the suddenly odd question, twirling a finger in her white hair glancing up at the boy, eyes glinting playfully.

She picked up a knight and waved it with each syllable "One hundred and fifty eight" she drawled, "I've had a lot of time tho think. What is life? What is death? Being dead doesn't mean one is not living, being alive doesn't mean one is not dead. My heart does not beat but I have no less passion, what I choose to be passionate about has changed. I tell you what will not change, what does not die, what cannot die, not the Bella, but ideas. I understand. The Bella knows. Human ideas started all this, beauty and horror and they will survive it too, even if humans themselves do not."

She studied the board, "I die again and again every 28 days of this long life. I kill, eat, read, I'm not sorry. I watch and study and learn. Why was the Bellamortu the only one who does not die and yet she does? These questions are too big. I must simply accept what I am, a living monster, a dead human, an idea. Things may die, you see, but they do not stop."

She was hardly paying attention to herself, if her words made sense, if they were inspiring or depressing. For a time she may have felt incredibly small, even being what she is, but then she settled into it, embraced it. "A tree does not mourn that it was once a seed, it does not miss the leaves that fall every year, it does not rejoice when new ones grow. It understands what it is and will not weep for any part of its existence. Bella knows this."

She lowered the knight and glanced up at the boy, "What is that look? What are you thinking human child, tell me." And she put the piece down at f6. (No pic bc I'm at work on my tablet)

"At least you know what you are. It's not common knowledge." She drawled, the game continued, and eventually Celeste won (sorry, it's how it would have ended anyways lol). "Saaaah!" Bella hissed and sat back with her arms crossed. "I was better at backgammon." She wasn't angry, in fact, losing to the human didn't really anger her, after all her brains were rotten, there was a good excuse for losing. Plus, maybe it made the human feel better, not that it truly mattered to Bella how the human felt, right?

Then again some dusty human feelings swirled in her guts and she found the sad little useless pathetic human a bit...endearing? "You earned three days," she said, lounging back in her coils, "you will be staying for all three? Surely a human will grow hungry, thirsty in that time. Did you bring such things?" So what if she was seeing if the human would be comfortable? It didn't mean she actually cared or anything.

Curiosity suddenly overcame her and she lifted herself toward the boy and poked his cheek, "you are used for bodily pleasures you say? Eh..." She coiled behind and touched his ribs, if he were ticklsh, hed jump, "Why?" She sniffed at him, he smelled tasty, but not sexy.