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Intertwined

20 Aug, 2024
Intertwined

Our tattoos find each other. My black snake slithers off my shoulder and curls itself around his dragon.

“This yours?” he says, holding out his arm where the two tattoos mingle.

“Sorry. She’s new.”

“It’s okay.” His green eyes smile back. They match his dragon’s scales. “It’ll take a while for your tattoo to settle, but in a week she’ll have formed her attachment.”

He carefully peels my snake away from his dragon. Her little fangs give a hiss, but she comes back to me, wriggling her way over my skin, and eventually coiling herself around my neck. I reach up to stroke her.

His dragon watches me carefully, fanning green wings across olive skin.

“Does yours ever leave?” I ask.

“Not usually. She stays close, but she wanders all over me. Arms, neck, legs, they’re her favourite places. Most days I wake up not knowing where she’ll be.” As if to demonstrate, his dragon moves across his forearm, up to his bicep where she curls into a tight green ball, her eyes just peeking out.

“She’s beautiful,” I say.

He holds my eyes. “Yes, she is,” he agrees.


There are no real animals anymore, but still, we like to pretend. Earth now houses zoos with holographic interactive images, farms with robotised animals, and 4D books filled with animals of the past. Any child can tell you what a cow is, and what noise it makes, but no one has ever seen one.

Yet here I am, a cow, as most women are.

Three times a day I report to my station, the cups are fastened to my breasts and I am drained of my milk.

Milk that sustains a nation. This is what the 24-hour advertising tells us.

I’m on my way home from the milking station when my snake slithers off my hand again. It runs away from me and finds its way back to the green dragon.

“We meet again,” he says.

This time his dragon is on his cheek, and my snake has coiled herself there. The black and green intertwine so much that I cannot tell where my snake begins and ends.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know why this keeps happening.”

“I think your snake likes me.” His face writhes with the tattoos. “Do you like my dragon?” he asks.

“Yes, I… I think I do.” And I smile for the first time in a long time.


I artificially conceived a child that was taken for me to become a cow.

But I’ve never felt a man’s touch.

The man with the dragon tattoo is the first to touch me.

Our bodies intertwine in his cramped quarters, his olive and my white. Our tattoos crawl over us, hissing and breathing fire as we pant for breath. When it is done, we lie there sated, watching our tattoos play upon our skins. Roaming between us.

He strokes my slackened stomach.

“Was it hard?” he asks.

I nod. They took a child, but they gave me a tattoo. A pretend pet to keep me company. All of us who wear tattoos carry a greater weight than others.

“And you?”

He strokes his dragon tattoo.

“The hardest,” he says. But he tells me no more.


We continue to meet. My snake and I both seeking comfort with the man and his dragon.He strokes my curves, my aching breasts, and sometimes dries my tears. He kisses my palms, caresses my hair, and one day he curls my snake into the shape of a ring and places it on one of my fingers as in the old ways.

But we do not speak of love.

Then one day after my milking, he is gone.

My snake wriggles from my arm, her tongue tasting the air for the scent of them. She brings me to a queue of pigs in the cold heart of the city.

Just like I’m a cow, we also have pigs. Humans are adaptable — we can become anything. Some of us are destined to be milked, and some are destined to be food. On the day of the pig slaughter, there’s a long line. All selected a year ago, all given a tattoo as compensation for their trouble.

Standing among them is the man with the dragon tattoo.

This time my snake does not slither to be with him. Even she detects death upon the air. She trembles upon my hand.

“A pig?” I ask.

“The hardest,” he says as he holds my hands. His green eyes turning to water.

The line inches further up to its destiny. The whirr of machines. The thump of dead bodies.

His dragon hides behind his ear, a green tail swishing below his lobe.

“I… I didn’t know,” I say.

“I didn’t tell you.”

I think my breasts are leaking, but it’s my eyes. Tears running down my chest, wetting my shirt.

“Keep her safe,” he chokes.

He presses my face close to his and his beautiful dragon leaves her olive home for my land of white.

The faint brush of dragon wings moves across my face, down my neck, and settles finally on my heart, curled tightly together with my snake.

Intertwined.

“Goodbye,” we whisper to each other.

A cow and a pig.

But we do not speak of love.

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