Kadru

At dawn, Kadru and her sister Vinata set out to see Ucchaihshrava, the horse whose colour will decide which of them becomes a slave. They have already made the wager, and the Mahabharata places jealousy beside their impatience as they approach the horse. Vinata calls him white. Kadru's question has turned a meeting with a remarkable horse into a contest with a human cost: each sister's freedom now depends on what the other will see in the tail.

Kadru chooses deception rather than accepting that answer. She tells her thousand serpent sons to become as black as collyrium and cover the horse's tail, so that she will not become enslaved. When the sons refuse, Kadru curses the snakes: at the future snake sacrifice of Janamejaya, a royal sage of the Pandava lineage, she says, fire will consume them. Later, Vinata is described as having lost the wager and living as Kadru's slave, tormented by grief. The sisters' test of the horse's colour has become a sentence on Vinata's freedom, while Kadru's attempt to secure herself brings a terrible prediction upon her sons.