[This whole situation has absolutely gone sideways, but one very good choice has been made: calling in two people that might be better equipped for a talk with a despairing tiny nonhuman sentient creature.]
[By the time Stacia and Dan get there, Branch is trapped in a butterfly net, the handle weighed down with several pounds of loose sand. Blood is dotted along the mesh from when he was struggling to break it open. The little Christmas ribbon tied around his left lower leg, over top the original bandage from the graze of Kaa's fang, is soaked through with blood.]
[Getting hit by an RC car had reopened the injury. Overtaxing his myth healing had come at a bad time when his body was repairing all the damage that had been done to his blood and its ability to clot.]
[He's sweating like someone close to passing out.]
[He'd needed to rest and had instead pushed himself to his limit. And he hadn't trusted anyone like Tim that had offered to dress the injury better.]
[Something is wrong with his color compared to when Stacia saw him last - there's hardly any. It's not that he's gone pale from blood loss. It's that he's lost almost all color, as if reduced to grayscale. The blue highlights in his hair are gone, so that it's now black. Even the green of his shredded little leaf vest and the patches in his shorts are duller.]
[He's sitting down in the center of the net's circular frame when they get there, his arms wrapped around his knees. He briefly looks up from where his face is buried in his arms with a dull expression on his face. He's completely emotionally shut down at this point.]
I know you probably don't care what I want, but please, when you feed me to one of your pointy-headed little kids, can you tell them to chew? I don't want to be swallowed whole.
For Dan and Stacia, cw: cannibalism
[By the time Stacia and Dan get there, Branch is trapped in a butterfly net, the handle weighed down with several pounds of loose sand. Blood is dotted along the mesh from when he was struggling to break it open. The little Christmas ribbon tied around his left lower leg, over top the original bandage from the graze of Kaa's fang, is soaked through with blood.]
[Getting hit by an RC car had reopened the injury. Overtaxing his myth healing had come at a bad time when his body was repairing all the damage that had been done to his blood and its ability to clot.]
[He's sweating like someone close to passing out.]
[He'd needed to rest and had instead pushed himself to his limit. And he hadn't trusted anyone like Tim that had offered to dress the injury better.]
[Something is wrong with his color compared to when Stacia saw him last - there's hardly any. It's not that he's gone pale from blood loss. It's that he's lost almost all color, as if reduced to grayscale. The blue highlights in his hair are gone, so that it's now black. Even the green of his shredded little leaf vest and the patches in his shorts are duller.]
[He's sitting down in the center of the net's circular frame when they get there, his arms wrapped around his knees. He briefly looks up from where his face is buried in his arms with a dull expression on his face. He's completely emotionally shut down at this point.]
I know you probably don't care what I want, but please, when you feed me to one of your pointy-headed little kids, can you tell them to chew? I don't want to be swallowed whole.
[He closes his eyes tight.]
Just get it over with.