The next morning, her hands shaking, she called a local reptile sanctuary. They agreed to take Safran, no questions asked. The relief was so immense it almost made her sick.
She cried when the man from the sanctuary carefully placed Safran into a transport container. But the tears weren’t for the loss of her companion. They were tears of shame, of profound stupidity. She felt utterly betrayed.
But underneath it all, there was a sliver of guilt. What if Safran wasn’t evil? What if this was just her nature, pure and simple, and Anya was the one who had tried to force it into a human-shaped box?
Still, something didn’t sit right. The vet had said she was fasting, but he hadn’t found any other health problems. And yet, for weeks, her behavior had been stranger than just that of a hungry snake.
Two days later, she got a call from the sanctuary.
“Ma’am, are you the original owner of the Burmese python brought in on Tuesday?” the man on the phone asked.
“Yes. Why? Is something wrong?”
“We did a full intake scan. We always do one in case the animals have old microchips or internal health issues we need to be aware of.” He paused. “Your python… she had something lodged in her lower intestine. Something metallic. At first, we thought it was a piece of a feeding tong she might have accidentally swallowed, but it’s not.”
Anya’s stomach turned to lead. “What is it?”
“It looks like a ring.”
She drove out to the sanctuary the next morning, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. The caretaker, a wiry, sun-weathered man named Wes, met her at the gate.
“You needed to see this for yourself,” he said, his voice grim.
He led her back to a quarantine tent. Inside, Safran lay in a massive enclosure, half-submerged in a pool of clean water. She looked calm, almost serene.
On a small table nearby sat a metal tray. On the tray, cleaned and placed on a square of white cloth, was a ring. It was a thick, simple gold band, unadorned and very, very familiar.
It was her grandmother’s wedding band.
The one that had vanished from her jewelry box nearly two years ago.
Anya stared at it, a wave of dizziness washing over her. She had torn her apartment apart looking for that ring. She’d accused cleaning ladies in her mind, imagined it falling down a drain, or being accidentally tossed out with the trash.
But somehow—Safran had eaten it. Or, more accurately… taken it.
It all came flooding back in a sickening rush. That strange day she’d come home to find the terrarium lid ajar. The small, carved wooden boxes knocked off her dresser. The faint, unusual scuff marks on the lid of her jewelry box. She had blamed herself, chided herself for being careless and forgetful.
But now, it made a sick, horrifying kind of sense.
Safran had been slithering out of her enclosure for much longer than Anya had realized. She had been exploring. Sizing things up. And apparently, hoarding.
Wes glanced at her, his expression a mixture of professional curiosity and pity. “She might have mistaken it for something else. A glint of light, a small rodent. Pythons are opportunistic.” But the tone of his voice suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced.
Neither was Anya. Safran had never shown the slightest interest in anything that wasn’t alive or, at the very least, meat-scented. But she had taken that ring.
Back home, the seed of a new, darker suspicion took root. Slowly at first, then with a frantic, obsessive energy, she started checking her belongings.
Her grandfather’s old silver watch, which she kept in a velvet pouch: gone. A thin silver chain she used to wear every day until it, too, had mysteriously disappeared: missing.
She sank to the floor, the truth unfurling like a slow, creeping dawn.
Safran hadn’t just been watching her breathe. She had been learning. About Anya. Her routines. Where she stored things. What she treasured. It wasn’t just predatory instinct. It felt targeted. It felt almost… personal.
A few weeks later, a letter arrived. It was from a law firm. Apparently, an old, eccentric neighbor from down the hall had passed away. Anya barely knew her, a woman who lived alone and never spoke to anyone. But, the letter explained, she had left something for Anya in her will.
