Wow, interesting tale, @steemitgraven29. Thank you for sharing this, as well as your discussion of it. I was keenly interested in your write-up, but I dutifully read the story before proceeding.
I see a few interwoven messages here. Like others, I'm not absolutely certain of the author's intent, and it occurs to me that perhaps he wasn't absolutely certain of it himself. I've written so many stories like that, where I had multiple competing messages, and was daunted by the work of tightening my writing to eliminate ambiguity. I really like this story, but I will admit to feeling a bit dissatisfied at the end, and I think it traces back to this.
One of the themes and messages in the beginning seems to be that we must not always believe what we hear. The tales of the snake seem to be only rumors, and there is a "moral of the story" type message about how destructive rumors can be. And yet the rumors turn out to be true. So, why did the author take the time to explore this theme and seemingly make a statement about hearsay, only to make an end-run around it?
Another theme that swirls through this piece is the leveling of cities around Adamondor as the snake devours them, which reduces lords to the status of urchins. The destruction of the cities levels the playing field and creates equality. The author could easily have made this the primary social statement, but he merely toyed with it and then cast it aside.
One clear message that was certainly an intended take-away was this one, about the way Reilitas is transformed as the snake consumes her work along with the marble and alabaster:
The snake has already taken from her everything she was afraid to lose, and so despair and not the snake has for her become the true Destroyer.
That notion transcends the story beautifully. Despair is indeed a destroyer. This message will most likely resonate with any reader. But it is understated. It's quickly mentioned and abandoned.
Finally, she creates an hourglass from her souvenir snake scale. And this leads to the most incongruous message of all.
She turns the hourglass over and, watching the powdery gray sand fall, she feels a kinship with the snake once called the Great Destroyer. The snake lived by changing the forms of cities into the form of its body. She has changed the form of its body into the form of the hourglass that will count down the last of the many days of her life.
So at this point in the story, when she has given up joy and hope and loses her desire to live, she suddenly feels a kinship with the snake that caused the damage that lead to this point because they both create change? I can't really follow the author down that path. I feel total resistance at this point in the story.
The very next lines are the ones that make me believe the author was never certain as to the one key underlying theme of this odd parable:
And so I am the Destroyer, she thinks as she watches the gray sand fall from one end of the hourglass to the other. But what, she wonders, has she destroyed?
Why would she pronounce herself the Destroyer when she does not believe she has destroyed anything? And she hasn't. She has created something beautiful out of the death and destruction wrought by the snake.
In this story the author toys with this central question: "what is destruction?" I think the story would have been more successful if he had the answer in his mind.
Thanks for the opportunity to read this story and join the discussion, @steemitgraven29! I look forward to many more posts like this one that give us the opportunity to examine themes and methods in fiction. I really enjoyed reading this story with a critical eye and sharing my thoughts.
I agree with you about the ending, it's a nice new image that is introduced, but to me it's too sweet and all-round let's leave with a positive thing. The ending has no direct link to me with the rest of it, and the like to being a destroyer herself is too weak. She has at most destroyed the will to live? But that's not really the point in the rest of the story.