As part of the #ilovewriting story contest, I figured I would throw in my hat, and toss out a story about my favourite person.
SNAKE.
Snake is not precisely a person (except when He is) but rather, a Totem... A particular form of god who has been my friend since 1996. I most certainly did not expect His arrival... in fact, he simply appeared to me as Quetzalcoatl but in truth, he is so much more...
He knew the story of King Da, the story of the Serpent and The Rainbow...
Snake, also known as
Damballa also spelled Damballah (Haitian Creole: Danbala) is one of the most important of all the Loa. Damballa is the Sky Father and the primordial creator of all life. He rules the mind, intellect, and cosmic equilibrium. White rum is sacred to him. Damballa, as the serpent spirit and The Great Master, created the cosmos by using his 7,000 coils to form the stars and the planets in the heavens and to shape the hills and valleys on earth. By shedding the serpent skin, Damballa created all the waters on the earth.[1] Damballa is syncretized with either Saint Patrick, Christ the Redeemer, Our Lady of Mercy, or Moses.[2]
Who is the same as Quetzalcoatl, and in my own urbane fashion, SNAKE. This the Totem who did come to me, in the Summer of 1996, before my sweet lover had moved on and I was falling headfirst back into a Horror of Love, wielded by a most cruel woman.
But in that most blessed of years, 1996, when I walked with gods and serpents and madmen and blessed spirits who I could not yet identify... Snake did come. In his raiment as the Feathered Serpent, and in the rather laughable (but still most Verdant,) film: The Serpent and The Rainbow:
I couldn't help but wonder why the film meant so much to me 6 years earlier... But it became frighteningly relevant in that Sweet, Blistering Summer...
Snake did come. He showed me many things, most especially... Himself.
For instance, are you aware that Snake is the most honest of all beasts? While wolves may misdirect, and jaguars may stalk, and crocodiles might lie in wait as logs... Snake will never lie. He is beyond it. Allow me to illustrate:
"Hi, I'm a garter snake.. I'm cute, and fun; and I'm here to eat all the vermin your cat misses... you should leave me alone and let me do that.. Snuggles!!"
as opposed to: 
"Don't make me fucking kill you..."
No matter what, a rattlesnake will NEVER lie to you. It will kill you so fast that even It doesn't know that it's happened until it's over.. but it will not lie. Ever.
Snake is like that: A walker in-between, built for eating small, and fully capable of punching FAR above his weight. He is not to be underestimated, and only a fool would assume that His Children will be friendly (as they are fully as Willful as He)... He is still a great and most elder god, Old even when the dinosaurs were young, perhaps the greatest among those who walk (or slither) on land...
And all without legs. Once, long ago, a fool I was living with went and asked my friend at the time, "What's the deal with Silas and snakes.. he won't shut up about them when he gets stoned.." and my friend responded: "Because he sees them as the perfect amalgam of form and function... It doesn't have legs? It doesn't -want- legs.. Legs would only get in the way..."
This is how I truly view Snake. Unfailingly honest, impossibly old, strong and deadly, and oh-so kind when he shares his oldest secret...
For you see.. in 1996, Snake did show me how he learned to shed his skin... He told me true, that he had wanted to die, after a certain... indiscretion... and not having hands to hold a blade, did decide to rub and scrape and cut upon a sharp rock, even until he passed out...
... and when He woke.. there, laying like a false corpus.. his skin, bearing all those scars.. all those sins. Snake did learn then, the secret of Self-Forgiveness.
And he bears it now, for those who will come...
I ain't gonna be a jackass and tell you to "not fear"... But Snake is there.. always and forever. Still there...