New World

He wore the green, three-piece suit and, of course, they razzed him all day. "Dude, you must get SO sick of this!" Patrick's friend whispered apologetically. "It's why I wear it; I'm just ... well ... I'm asking for it, really," he replied. They touched him for good luck; they offered him anything and everything green to eat; they played Celtic music when he entered meeting rooms. At dawn, long before the work day started, he'd gone out in his robes to greet the trees and ask their blessing (with offerings of food and water); on his lunch break, Patrick walked to the park and liberally coated bare patches of grass with seed (for the soil to reclaim or the birds to eat). "You going? COME ON!" they begged for his company at some dive bar serving green beer, but he declined. At close of the day, Patrick drove to the river and (quaking with the energy he'd been gifted from people all day) changed, slithering into the bushes and greeting the others in their native tongue. "It's fine to remember the old world," he hissed, "but let us be grateful for the new which accepts us as best it can." And the snakes nodded and twisted, coiling together in kinship, in harmony with both the mystery and alchemy of life.