For Elevyn, alias OSLF. This is an excerpt from a silly bit of something I've been plotting for the better part of a year now. Fondly known as "the tea story" and more formally dubbed 'The Brew' by Abigail H., this is basically a collection of (hopefully) humorous anecdotes revolving around the interactions of characters (mostly animals) all named after brands and varieties of tea. This excerpt allows you to meet the first character I've properly put down on paper: Assam. I say 'properly' because he's the only one I've really met so far, and so the only one I really know, to some degree. Um - yes.

It was lonely and hot at the bottom of the ravine.

Not that you or I would have minded the heat so very much, but Assam was a Very Small sort of serpent, and heat of any kind bothered him excessively. (Cold did, too, but heat was the present affliction on his mind.) Although it was rather chilly up above for one of his blood, he thought he infinitely preferred huddling between and beneath blades of grass for shelter Up There to the nigh-scorching heat of Down Here.

To Assam, it was like a desert Down Here: brown-grey, stretching out as far as the eye could see, rough and coarse and dry against his bare belly. The ravine wall was not that deep, but it was steep enough to prevent his slithering back up the whole way. Being a Very Small serpent, he lacked the ordinary strength and size that allowed most of his kind to slither about with ease. In fact, he tended to stay inside on most days, and that was where he was trying to go.

He could see it now—if he stretched himself up and back and squinted—the little white cottage covered in roses which was ‘home’ to Assam. He was quite sure he had had a good reason for leaving it, but he could not remember just now. All he knew was that his top was chilly and his underside scorching and he wanted to go home…

But first he had to make it up the ravine, and that seemed an insurmountable task. He sat, feeling very much out of breath and out of sorts. At last he turned his back on the wall and looked out across the desert to the other side of the ravine. ‘I know I'm rather small for slithering,' he said to himself, 'and therefore probably much too small for thinking—but the slithering hasn't worked, so I shall just have to try to think. How can I get back to Lady Jane?’

(Lady Jane was the name of the girl who lived in the white cottage covered in roses, which was (as I hope you’ll remember) home to Assam.)

It dawned slowly on him (as things tended to dawn on Assam) that he could not get back up right here, but that did not mean he could not get back up by some other way.

‘And perhaps,’ said he to himself, ‘that Other Way would be—um—across the Desert. There is grass over there, and I think—um—that dark spot is a crack in the wall, which might be slither-um-able even for such a poor slitherer as I. And then—um—then I would have to go the long way around back to the house, but—um—at least it would be grassy and warm, and my belly wouldn’t feel so burnt.’

He slithered away to attempt this, and here I shall attempt to describe exactly how Assam slithered. It was not a fearsome, hypnotic winding, as was the way with most snakes (for even the other smallish ones seemed better slitherers than he). This was not for want of trying on Assam’s part. The whole slithering thing just … failed to work. He pulled with his nose and pushed with his tail and wriggled about all in between, but the in-between parts flopped about and often got tangled up in themselves. Perhaps this was why Lady Jane had adopted him, although she was not very fond of snakes as a general rule.

Of course, as you probably suspect, he was not really in a Great Desert Ravine at all; he had merely fallen out of the grass over what you and I would call a “curb.” It was not a very long fall, but he was a very bad slitherer, and he really was unable to get back up. Perhaps, too, he had not so very far to go to get across the road, but it was longer for a small snake who was (as I’ve told you at least a dozen times) not a spectacular slitherer. At last, when he had flopped and tangled and flopped and untangled and flopped and feebly slithered his way all the long way across the Great Desert, he arrived and found the wall split in that place just as he had thought, and he could get up rather easily.

‘Aaaahhmmm,’ he thought to himself, as his belly left the hot pavement and found the moist, cool earth, ‘This is—um—better.’

There is nothing quite like the feeling a snake feels making his way through the grass. Assam liked it because he could move along without the feeling that Somebody Might Be Watching his silly way of slithering. He always felt a bit ridiculous on the open dirt. The Great Desert would not have been so excruciating if his belly had not been so hot and his mind frantic with the notion that a blackbird or—heaven forbid—one of his distant cousins was watching him and laughing the whole way.

But the grass—ah, the grass was another matter altogether! He pretended he was sleek and powerful and made of Epic Proportions, and there was nobody to spoil his delusions. Massive blades of grass bent in his wake (he really darted meekly around them) and there was neither scorching concrete nor chilly wind to torment him, top or bottom.

7 Missages

1. Abigail Hartman on October 13, 2010 at 12:05 PM

   Ooh, I got to name the story! Huzzah! ^.^
   
   I love Assam: he's absolutely adorable. I don't think I've heard of that type of tea, though. What brand is it?

    
2. Unknown on October 13, 2010 at 6:21 PM

   Assam is a type of tea grown in Assam, India (whodathunk?!). I think Harney&Sons sells Assam tea by that name; that's where I heard of it, at any rate. Most commonly, however, it's found running incognito in/as one of the Breakfast blends - English, Scottish, Irish; you know the lot.
   
   And that's as much as I know about Assam tea. Apart from the fact that it's generally Delicious. ^.^

    
3. Abigail Hartman on October 14, 2010 at 9:04 AM

   IS there a Scottish Breakfast tea? I guess Twinings, being the good ol' English tea-maker it is, just doesn't sell that one...
   
   My favourite is Ceylon tea. Good stuff, that. ^.^

    
4. Marigold on October 14, 2010 at 6:36 PM

   Ah. So THIS is the animal-tea story. It looks fun. :-)
   Any particular reason for the girl to be named Lady Jane? Is there a tea out there named that which I haven't run into (entirely possible, as I generally just drink generic plain black tea)?

    
5. Unknown on October 14, 2010 at 6:59 PM

   Well, there's Lady Grey, which naturally made me think of Lady Jane Grey, which turned into Lady Jane.

    
6. F.B. on October 16, 2010 at 1:21 PM

   Hooray! It's here, at long last! Hello to Assam and co. Thank you so much for posting this! :o) Brings great delight and joy to my heart. *grin*

    
7. Sparrow on October 21, 2010 at 4:50 PM

   Awwsqueeables! ^.^ Assam is adorable. And I'm rather eager to see whether he ends up battling and defeating a creature of vileness that happens to be named Coffee. >.O