A Snake Falls to Earth: List 2

by Darcie Little Badger
When she was a child, Nina heard stories about shape-shifters from her great-great-grandmother; at 16, Nina encounters a shape-shifter who has come to Earth seeking a cure for his companion's illness.

This list covers "Nina, Age 13"–"Cottonmouth Meets Cooper's Hawk and a Sinister Stranger."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
40 words 59 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. projection
    a prediction made by extrapolating from past observations
    Nina glanced at the television screen, which was playing ominous maps from the Weather Channel. Last she checked, most projections showed the hurricane veering east.
  2. roiling
    (of a liquid) agitated vigorously; in a state of turbulence
    There was one slender, faintly shimmering silver lining around the roiling clouds of hurricane season: every time the Weather Channel predicted a big storm, Nina and her dad visited Grandma's house to check on things.
  3. defunct
    no longer in force or use; inactive
    Earlier that afternoon, Nina had rummaged through chargers for devices ranging from digital cameras to defunct game consoles.
  4. adamant
    impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, or reason
    Grandma shook her head adamantly.
  5. ingenuity
    the property of showing inventiveness and skill
    Out here, coyotes and foxes will chew through metal to steal a chicken. Vigilance is important. Cleverness, too. Believe it or not, the moment you underestimate a coyote’s ingenuity, they win.
  6. hanker
    desire strongly or persistently
    I know folks who are hankering for books.
  7. discretion
    knowing how to avoid embarrassment or distress
    It’s not like they all went extinct after the joined era. So...perhaps brave ones still visit us now and then. In secret. I’d be reluctant to pester them. As the Odd Jobs Man said, discretion can be a matter of life and death.
  8. unwieldy
    difficult to work with or manipulate
    I switched from my false form with arms and legs (which are so unwieldy in the water; how does anything with limbs manage to swim?) to my true form and was a long leap away from the shore when a high-pitched voice called, “Hey, wait! It’s okay, viper! We didn’t mean to scare you!”
  9. per se
    with respect to its inherent nature
    But they were strangers, and since my precious blanket was still missing, the raft was the most important thing I had. It wasn’t irreplaceable, per se, but the replacement process would take a season of hard labor, since I’d have to do everything alone.
  10. inscrutable
    difficult or impossible to understand
    They stared at me, inscrutable.
  11. naive
    lacking information or instruction
    Lots of naïve land-based peoples rowed to the center of the lake to chuck their bags of incriminating junk overboard. They didn’t realize there were low-down aquatic scavengers who made a living off blackmail.
  12. snub
    reject outright and bluntly
    “That means if the monsters hate our messages, the worst they can do is snub us.”
  13. diffuse
    spread out; not concentrated in one place
    “This is the trickiest part,” the bottle whispered, sounding as diffuse and hollow as a distant echo. “It’s not easy to trap your voice in glass.”
  14. backfire
    return with an undesired effect
    In any case, trapping a question in a bottle seemed to be a minor feat of world-shaping. The kind that, if it backfired, would cause less damage than a pebble plopping in the mud.
  15. volatile
    liable to lead to sudden change or violence
    They lived in a squadron of houseboats, drifting from bank to bank in a terrible, unpredictable cycle. And, to put it lightly, they were volatile.
  16. ebb
    fall away or decline
    “So quickly?” I asked; I knew that species ebbed and flowed through time. That nothing lasted forever. But the process was usually slow, spanning countless generations—time measured by the erosion of mountains, not weeks or years.
  17. ward
    a person who is under the protection of another
    The catfish cultists—the guardians of the finned and whiskered—were one of many groups who believe that we are guardians of our species. Gods, even. Unfortunately, instead of protecting their wards on Earth, they seemed preoccupied by harassing other animal peoples in the Reflecting World.
  18. delineate
    show the form or outline of
    Land was a vague line of green delineating the horizon, separating the water from the sky.
  19. amorphous
    having no definite form or distinct shape
    He was in the amorphous “midadult” age category, ranging from thirty to three hundred years.
  20. bemused
    perplexed by many conflicting situations or statements
    "Fight?" Risk asked, bemused.
  21. undulate
    move in a wavy pattern or with a rising and falling motion
    When I transformed, my clothes ballooned around me like a fabric tunnel; I flicked my tail, propelling through the open water, and then shot forward in an undulating motion, my body a physical manifestation of a propagating wave.
  22. manifestation
    an appearance in bodily form
    When I transformed, my clothes ballooned around me like a fabric tunnel; I flicked my tail, propelling through the open water, and then shot forward in an undulating motion, my body a physical manifestation of a propagating wave.
  23. warily
    in a manner marked by keen caution and watchful prudence
    I squinted warily at the smudge of a houseboat.
  24. retribution
    the act of taking revenge
    Nevertheless, that particular cultist seemed mean enough to seek bloody retribution for my act of self-defense.
  25. mundane
    found in the ordinary course of events
    It wasn’t the silty brown sludge at the cusp of the lake—the mundane, inoffensive mud I often tracked around the campsite. This mud smelled as ripe as oil, like it had been stewing in the water for aeons.
  26. demystify
    make something easier to understand
    Nina had been to the well several times before her fourteenth birthday, but now, she came prepared to demystify its greatest mystery.
  27. pragmatic
    concerned with practical matters
    She was just being realistic, pragmatic.
  28. emaciated
    very thin, especially from disease or hunger or cold
    Emaciated orange trees, their branches bare and dry, grew along the road.
  29. straggler
    someone who strays or falls behind
    They were the fruitless stragglers of a long-abandoned orchard.
  30. domicile
    housing that someone is living in
    The small domicile was surrounded by a chain-link fence: ten feet high and topped with a tangle of barbed wire. The new neighbor had moved in.
  31. concede
    admit or acknowledge, often reluctantly
    “Don’t worry, Dad. I’m just lowering a rope.”
    “Well,” he conceded, “I guess that’s safer than basejumping.”
  32. innocuous
    lacking intent or capacity to injure
    Under different circumstances, he might have been an innocuously average-looking man. He stood about five feet, nine inches tall. Had a thin build, and was clean-shaven, with vertical laugh lines down his cheeks. His hair was dark brown and neatly trimmed.
  33. huffy
    quick to take offense
    By the time Paul reached his beetle-bright camper, he seemed tinier than a plastic army man, hardly threatening at all. Just a huffy little man who had to get the last word with a 14-year-old girl.
  34. grackle
    a long-tailed blackbird with iridescent black feathers
    Chatty grackles enjoyed huddling in the mesquite trees along its banks.
  35. plaintive
    expressing sorrow
    Moments later, a plaintive, high-pitched cry erupted from behind the bush.
  36. hunker down
    take shelter
    Everyone knows—straight from the egg—it's safer to wait if you tumble from the nest. Just hunker down and shriek.
  37. gnarled
    old and twisted and covered in lines
    Sure enough, a rust-speckled chain link, the size of the loop my forefinger and thumb make when I sign “okay,” protruded from a knot of gnarled bark.
  38. commission
    place an order for
    Maybe a hunk of turquoise with rich veins of brown, a stone reminiscent of scales. I’d take it to an artisan to commission a cuff for my wrist.
  39. mannerism
    a behavioral attribute that is distinctive to an individual
    Usually, mimic-type animal people could imitate just one component of another person. The physical form, the voice, or the scent. The mockingbird girl must have been unusually skilled.
    “Not just implying. It’s a fact. She’s great at nailing mannerisms, too. I don’t get it, though. What was her goal today? What did she tell you?”
  40. commiseration
    feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others
    “She stole half my dinner!”
    Ami patted my shoulder in commiseration, while Brightest shook their head.
Created on Wed Dec 01 14:53:36 EST 2021 (updated Fri Dec 03 13:10:38 EST 2021)

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