“Oh, Callie Ohpeee,” Roksie breathed, “your horns are magnificent in the light of the pink moon.”

Callie blushed. This was the night she’d been waiting for, the night they would finally consummate their budding matespritship. As Roksie leaned in her hand tenderly found Callie’s cheek, and their lips met like twin rose petals. Her mouth was hot and soft.

Roksie’s skin split with a sound like tearing silk. The serpent that burst forth from within was many times the size Roksie herself had been, crackling with a magnificent kaleidoscopic light as reality itself rewove itself around her. It was massive, coiling up into the sky in endless loops, her jaws a mile wide and dripping with venom.

Callie’s hands trembled as she laid them on Roksie’s slick scales. She could feel the change welling up inside her, and soon she, too, would shed her skin, let her bones melt and reform and the two of them would devour one another.