I must confess, I've been asking my friends to read "Tommy Serpent" and tell me what they thought of it. Everyone has really liked it - reassuring, because *I* really like it - but one of my friends came up with an extremely creepy interpretation. Because of the black and yellow "v" on Tommy's neck, she thought he was Voldemort reincarnated, and that little Christopher had unwittingly brought Voldemort into his house. Isn't that a horribly creepy idea? And not at all what I intended; Tommy's just a snake. Snakes are not evil! They are predators, true, but that doesn't make them evil.
I quickly hunted up a picture of a young grass snake so my friend could see what I was talking about - she is from Taiwan and had never seen nor heard of an English grass snake, so she was imagining all sorts of implications I didn't intend at all. Greenwoodside, I'm so glad you picked up on the implications I *did* intend! One more thing I might mention about this little ficlet; Tommy himself is based on a character in "The Sword in the Stone", which is also where I learned about grass snakes. I got a bit more info about them from "Talboys", a short story by Dorothy Sayers. The snake in that story is called Cuthbert.
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