Some things never changed. Eshanai had her eyes closed and basked in the sunlight streaming down from the few openings in the jungle canopy, far above her head. The thick covering made the light of the jungle floor limited and gloomy. She had never in her life known another Naga who wouldn’t take the opportunity to catch some rays whenever they could, and she had known plenty. Eshanai was certainly no exception.

Eshanai’s forked tongue flickered out of her mouth momentarily to taste the wind despite her closed eyes. The forest was alive with scents, with its monolithic trees that grew almost as high as the eye could see. They had roots thicker than Eshanai’s waist and trunks thicker than, well, everything. Not even the giant sea creatures Eshanai had sometimes seen jumping out of the ocean could compete for sheer circumference. However, she had never gotten a good look. Always watching from far away at the edge of the forest, who knew what hid under the waves.

There were flowers and plants of many varieties, their various scents caught in the wind, no doubt reaching for the best sunbeams. I am much like a flower in that regard, Eshanai thought in amusement, chuckling lightly to herself. Nervous shuffling sent vibrations through the ground that her tremor sense quickly picked up on, the goblin in front of her not knowing what to make of her good mood.

Yes, by far, one of the strongest scents in the area was the smell of goblin. There were four of them out here, the one in front of Eshanai standing guard in the cave opening, having long since finished inspecting the dead Greathorn lying on the ground between them. The three others were currently sneaking up behind her, hidden in the underbrush. She thumped the end of her long green-scaled tail lightly against the ground to get a clearer picture, she got a sense of the extensive tunnel system below her scales, and to her surprise, she discovered there were five of the little green goblins instead of four.

The last one was downwind of her position to her right, keeping perfectly still. To not startle the plants around it or not to trigger her tremor sense Eshanai didn’t know. Either way, if she hadn’t used her tail to send out her own vibrations, she might not have noticed the cunning little creature in time.

They grew bolder every day, ever since the spirits had abandoned the Naga. The goblins thought to test her, suspecting that she was unfavoured. Eshanai thought it was cute. Goblins lived such short lives. They simply didn’t know any better, yet they seemed much more fulfilled in a way that Eshanai found hard to grasp but admired nonetheless. Although being so weak and helpless was less admirable, it did make their courage and daring somehow more incredible. You couldn’t be brave without fear after all, although the difference between bravery and stupidity was also hard to grasp.

The goblins might think they had trapped her in an ambush, but Eshanai was baiting them in truth. It was best to set an example now and spare both herself and the goblins a lot of trouble down the line. Some of them might die, but such things happened. She only needed to make sure that she didn’t kill all of them, so the fear of her could spread to the rest of their tribe through the survivors.

Eshanai stretched her body in the sunlight to get ready for the goblins to spring their trap. The circular scars around her waist smarted, reminding her that she needed to be careful even if she was only facing goblins. Before the spirits had left them, the scars would have healed in no time or any injury for that matter. Now they would fade eventually, but it would take some time.

A thrill ran through her, danger, it was ridiculous, but she was actually excited. She could defeat the goblins with ease, but if they got in a lucky shot, she could be seriously crippled or maybe even killed. Eshanai’s hearts beat rapidly again, maybe being unfavoured had a silver lining after all. She had felt the same when she tried to swim out to sea a couple of weeks ago, trying to see how far she could go, earning Eshanai her new set of scars. She grinned again as the excitement got the better of her.

When you lived as long as Eshanai had, you started to see patterns in things. She and her Naga sisters would try to build some sort of community to varying degrees of success, only for some disaster to come along that forced them into hiding all across the island. Eshanai had survived seven of these disasters, and she had lost more friends than she cared to count. She was tired of having her hope rekindled, only for it to be inevitably snuffed out again and again and again.

She had struggled to find meaning in it all for a time, thinking that maybe life wasn’t worth living anymore, but then this latest so-called disaster had snuck upon them. It wasn’t even that bad. Nobody had died. The spirits had simply stopped mindlessly following commands. However, the elders had still deemed it an emergency and issued their decree to make the Naga go into hiding, forbidding any contact between them. Eshanai and her older sisters would be fine, but the newly spawned Naga would struggle without their sisters to guide them.

Eshanai had followed the instructions at first, but she had eventually realized something. Without the spirits, what could the elders do to stop her? She was free to do as she pleased, and she had found a new purpose. Eshanai might have gone a little overboard, doing all the things that were previously barred to her, gone to the shore out of the jungle, to ancient ruins and dungeons deep underground.

The elder’s warnings echoed in Eshanai’s head, but nothing terrible had happened to her, making her wonder why they had been so adamant in forbidding them in the first place. Ok, some things are outright dangerous, especially now with no help from the spirits, Eshanai thought and ran a hand over the pockmarked scars on her waist, but others just held strange carvings in cliff walls or simply forgotten structures. The new dangers only excited her more, and she had searched out all the little hidden away places she could.

Eshanais sunbathing was interrupted as an arrow of all things shot from the bushes at her. It was the sneaky goblin on her right, the violent motion causing the plants around it to quickly retreat into the ground and the spirits floating in the air to dissipate out of sight. Eshanai had felt the goblin shifting its weight, but her eyes widened when the arrow came flying at her. She managed to bring up her tail for the projectile to deflect off her hard scales, a good shot. The arrow might have lodged itself in her eye if she wasn’t quick enough. Unfortunately for the goblins, she was.

The three behind her came screaming out of the bushes with weapons raised high above their heads. They, too, made all the vegetation around them retract back into the ground. Their screaming ruined an otherwise fine ambush, in Eshanai’s opinion, but perhaps they had seen some success with other prey using such scare tactics. She would teach them the error of their ways.

Eshanai turned around quickly as the goblins came within striking distance, and her tail whipped out in a low sweep. She hit the first one in the side and wrapped it up tight. The second goblin saw this, jumped over the incoming tail with its trapped friend in tow, and barely cleared it. The third was not so lucky. It also tried to jump but had misjudged the timing. As her tail swept by underneath, it struck the goblins’ feet. It spun around in the air to land hard face-first on the ground. It went limp, losing its grip on its weapon, apparently unconscious.

The second one landed, looking almost surprised that it had come out unharmed and got a backhanded slap to the face as a reward for its momentary distraction. There was an audible crunch as Eshanai’s hand connected, sending the goblin flying back to crash into a tree. Its body went limp as it slowly peeled off to fall to the ground, two down and one safely wrapped up in her coils, only two goblins left.

The one who had inspected her kill hadn’t moved, standing rooted to its spot in front of the cave, its body shook with barely controlled fear. It would survive if it behaved itself. The one in her coils struggled to breathe. She considered sparing it too. What ultimately decided it for Eshanai was her one goblin audience. She had an image to maintain after all, and so she tightened her grip on every exhalation until the goblin in her coils no longer had any room to take a breath. Then, when it also went limp, she released it to let it fall to the ground.

Only the stealthy one was a threat now. Eshanai had lost track of it in the commotion, with it only having shot a single arrow in the whole encounter. Her tail beat out a rhythmic thump, thump, thump against the ground, trying to get a read on her surroundings. Two of the goblins were dead. The one she had strangled and the one she had backhanded would never get back up again, but the one she had only clipped with her tail was still alive. Its single heart was beating a steady rhythm of its own where it lay face down in the dirt, and her audience, of course, but she got nothing from the sneaky archer.

Eshanai’s forked tongue flickered out to taste the air, but the archer had been downwind of her, to begin with, and with the strong smell of goblin in the air, she was practically in their lair. It was hard to pick out one individual from another. So she slithered over to the spot where she had first seen the sneaky one, at the same time feeling the one guarding the entrance hit the ground, fainting from relief or fear. Eshanai didn’t know.

She bent low to the still warm ground and caught the scent of the sneaky one. It had run further downwind into the forest. Had it fled? It certainly looked like it. Would she find another ambush if she followed the trail? Eshanai hoped so, this little goblin was clever, and she looked forward to seeing if it could surprise her again, she would almost be disappointed if it had only run away.

It had a bow, a rather advanced construction for a goblin, usually wielding clubs or just rocks as their weapons. They wear and make loincloths and various pouches and bags, but no tree would allow a goblin to take the wood necessary to make a bow.

Eshanai reasoned that her meeting could wait. She wanted to know if her impression of this goblin was right, so she decided to follow it. Her pursuit was made easy at first, the archer had left clear footprints, and its scent was fresh. When she came to a small river, her hunt grew to a stop. The goblin’s smell was gone, and she could not find any sign of it on the opposite bank. It must have walked in the water to obscure its trail and mask its scent.

Her esteem for this sneaky goblin grew as Eshanai contemplated going up or downriver. Further downriver would eventually lead to the falls, she didn’t think the little goblin would dare go there, but it could leave the river at any point from here to there. The goblin would be swept up in the current as the river widened if it went too far.

Eshanai would have to go downstream and look for any sign of it until she got to the rapids and then turn back to look further upstream. She would waste a lot of time if it had decided to travel the other way, but that gave it time to prepare a better trap for her. She smiled, this had turned out to be a good day. For that alone, she was thankful. The good days had been few and far between lately. Who knew? She might even let this sneaky little goblin live if it could make her day even more enjoyable.

Her venture downriver was predictably fruitless, coming up with no sign of the little goblin. It had either got swept up in the strong currents of the rapids, in which case it was probably dead, or it had traveled further upstream. So when Eshanai got to the white frothing waters of the rapids, she did just that, hurrying to the place where she had first lost the trail in the river and taking it more slowly from there to try and catch the goblins scent again.

After some time of this search, Eshanai grew uncertain. Perhaps she had gone too far and missed the point where the goblin had left the river, but she didn’t want to go back. She needed a way to be sure. River spirits were swimming around her in the water. She had attracted quite a following as she traveled the river. They looked like transparent glowing fish of all shapes and sizes. The spirits swam in circles around her and sometimes darted off, no doubt, to bring news to their master. They had likely done the same with the goblin.

Before the Naga became unfavored, Eshanai could have just asked the river spirits if they had seen the goblin, and they would answer. She could still ask them, but they would undoubtedly demand something in return, and who knew what a river desired. There were other spirits in the area, though, ones more easily understood. She could bargain with them if the river's price was too steep.

“Say, spirits of the river. You wouldn’t happen to have seen a goblin pass by your waters lately, have you?” Eshanai asked, trying to sound casual. Maybe the river would just blurt it out, not knowing the value the information held to her.

“Mayhaps we have,” came many voices speaking as one as glowing spirits began to rise out of the water forming a small school of fish that started to swim around her lazily in the air. “Mayhaps we invited it to dine with our master. His watery depths could always use more guests.” They said together spitefully. It seems like the goblin had at least been here from the sound of it, Eshanai thought as she sighed, but if she wanted more information, it looked like she would have to work for it.

“I confess I do not know what a river would want. Name your price, and I’ll do my best to meet it.” Being polite never hurts.

“And we are unsure if we want anything from you, at least something you’d be willing to part with,” the spirits said after taking some time to consider, all the while swimming their lazy circles around Eshanai in the air. “You have no shinies that we can see, perhaps a secret to bring back to master or even a goblin, oh he’ll be happy as a clam if you bring us a goblin for him to play with.”

“Does it have to be a living one?”

“Oh yes, our master does so love it when they struggle.” That was too bad. Otherwise, Eshanai could have just hurried back and fetched one of the goblins she’d killed. She didn’t want to offend her host she was meeting with more than she already had by offering a living goblin to the river. Telling it a secret was still an option, although Eshanai didn’t think she knew anything that a river would find interesting. It had been here before she spawned, and she was pretty sure it knew everything worth knowing already.

“We can see that you are having trouble deciding,” the river spirits suddenly spoke from behind her, “there is a rumor.” Eshanai turned her head to look at the floating school of fish and followed it as it traveled its lazy circle around her.

“What do you mean, a rumor about what? I will tell you if I know of it,” Eshanai said, finally feeling like she was getting somewhere.

“Our friends in the wind whisper to us of a sound coming from the shore, a sound first heard when the seafloor fell in love with the sky but then forgotten. Tell us, little snake, why do the Naga deny us so? We know you play the ancient tunes.” Eshanai could feel her cheeks heat as her face flushed, had news traveled this far?

“I, well, i-it is, I’m not very,” Eshanai stammered as the spirits laughed in their many voices. “By the mountain!” She finally exclaimed in frustration, “I’ll ask the trees instead. At least their wants are somewhat understandable.”

“Fine,” the spirits said as their laughter died down. “We are more than satisfied, happy as a clam indeed, a hyena more like with news like this,” and with that, they dove back into the water and sped off to gossip about Eshanai to their precious master.

Eshanai had revealed more than she intended in that engagement and not gained much of anything in return. She needed to be more careful with her words in her future dealings with spirits. Now for the trees, she could try to get the wind’s attention, but the spirits of the air were flighty things, and she was not guaranteed to meet one that had been here recently enough to have seen the goblin.

No, a tree was better. Trees might be slow of thought and action, but they at least paid attention, and what she had told the river was right. She did know what a tree would want. Eshanai eyed the water burbling around her. On the goblin, it must have reached up to its waist. On her, it barely wetted the scales of the back of her tail trailing behind her.

She could hunt for crabs, but she would have to lift many rocks to find their hiding places, and she didn’t want to disturb the nest of a Cype or a Spiteling. They liked to hide in dark wet spots, and Eshanai would rather avoid getting zapped today. If she stood still enough, the fish would get used to her and come closer. She didn’t have a fishing spear, but she could catch one if she were quick. It would waste more time, but Eshanai was okay with that.

A single fish might not offer much nourishment to one of the immense trees of the jungle, but Eshanai thought it might be enough for the small favor she was asking. So, with her mind made up, Eshanai settled in to wait, coiling her tail under her made for a comfortable place to sit.

The water felt nice and refreshing against her scales, almost tempting her to enjoy a nice bath. There was time enough for that later, after her business in the goblin cave. Eshanai could leave this whole hunt and go back there, she supposed. The sneaky one would surely come back to its tribe. She had its scent now, so she could just find it later. Eshanai was already late as it was.

Most goblins possessed a low cunning, setting up crude traps and ambushes with little regard for tactics as they had done outside their cave against her. This one was different. It had taken the wind into account, eluded her tremor sense, and even managed to cover its tracks, making Eshanai lose it entirely. Goblins didn’t just learn such behavior. They needed to be taught. Their new benefactor was the likely culprit, and if Eshanai managed to catch the little goblin, she could gain an advantage. If whoever this was had put some effort into developing and teaching the sneaky one, it was likely important. That was of little interest to her though, Eshanai mostly wanted to see if it could surprise her again, what it would do when cornered.

Not to mention the bow, how had it gotten it? If it had indeed obtained it from a tree, it was even brighter than Eshanai had given it credit for. It couldn’t have just taken the wood necessary to make a bow. It had to have bargained for it. Or perhaps it was like her, and it liked to explore new places. Maybe it had found it in some old ruin. That was the most reasonable solution Eshanai was leaning towards. Besides, where would a goblin learn to craft a bow of all things? Sitting down and teaching a clumsy goblin how to prepare a bow seemed a slow and arduous process to her. But who knew? This goblin seemed to know things others of its kind didn’t, so maybe.

Eshanai watched as the river fish got used to her and swam closer, not close enough yet. She studied her reflection as she waited. Amber-colored eyes stared back at her, with pupils like vertical slits that all the Naga had.

Those eyes moved on to her tanned skin, earned from long evenings spent basking in the sun to her brown hair cut off at the shoulders. That was a good length, Eshanai thought, enough for small braids and decorations but short enough that it was hard to grab in a fight.

Some of her younger sisters had hair so long it trailed on the ground. That was just impractical, and Eshanai had said so many times. Some listened, some didn’t, which was their choice. She could freely admit that very long hair was beautiful, but such vanity was often beaten out of the young in their first few cycles by life itself.

Eshanai had plenty of vanities left in her, though. Most Naga did, just not to such extremes that it went against practicality. Her eyes traveled down again to examine her sculpted eyebrows, her delicate nose, and over her full lips. Her tongue came out to wet those lips, and she gave her reflection a sultry smile and a wink, her fangs showing. Yes, Eshanai knew she was beautiful and proud of it. Some would say too proud. Beauty wasn’t much of an accomplishment among the Naga. Every one of them was at least as gorgeous as her, if not more so. Still, Eshanai liked how she looked. She couldn’t help it, and she didn’t see anything wrong with that.

Her fangs retracted as her eyes traveled further still, and strong arms flexed as Eshanai cupped her breasts, nipples hard from the cool water. They were nice handfuls, slightly overflowing in her grip but not so big that they got in the way. Eshanai had grown more appreciative of that as she got older. She could get terribly jealous in her younger days. Targeting the sisters she thought was more beautiful than her for the sin of having big tits. It was petty, she knew, but Eshanai liked to believe she had grown past such youthful jealousy. She massaged them for a bit, enjoying the weight of them in her hands as she squeezed her tits.

Eshanais eyes followed as her solid, perfectly smooth hands moved on to stroke down over her sculpted stomach, past her slowly healing scars, and to her waist where the green emerald scales of her tail began. Everything below her waist was so armored except where the petals of her sex poked through.

Eshanai had not had any company for a long time now. The temptation to touch herself right here and now was strong, and she could feel how her sex warmed and tingled slightly at the thought, but again Eshanai restrained herself. There was plenty of time for that later.

Instead, her hand suddenly shot out into the water, and taking into account the river’s tricks, Eshanai aimed slightly to the side of the fish that had swum too close. Strong fingers wrapped around slippery scales as she quickly yanked the modestly sized fish out of the water. It struggled, but she smacked it against a nearby rock, and the fish went limp.

Eshanai took a moment to admire her catch. It was bigger than she had thought. Its striped silvery scales shimmered in the sun as Eshanai smiled and made her way to the bank of the river. This might just work out after all.